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New guidance brings clarity to environmental hazard and behaviour testing of nanomaterials

Nature Nanotechnology volume 16, pages 482–483 (2021)Cite this article

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To the Editor— Manufactured nanomaterials (MNs) may have novel or enhanced properties compared to bulk materials with the same elemental composition, enabling a range of product applications in multiple sectors. With the potential for widespread usage of MNs in products, it is essential to reproducibly assess their potential for ecological and human health risks and environmental fate during a product’s life cycle1. However, the unique properties and dynamic behaviours of MNs hinder the attainment of consistent environmental hazard and fate results.

Regulatory agencies often require standardized test methods to assess the potential aquatic toxicity hazards of substances and their environmental behaviours. Most methods for ecotoxicological testing were designed for dissolved substances; depending on the protocol, this may involve intentional removal of solid-phase particulates and thus exclusion of potential ‘physical effects’, or insufficient characterization to understand the relative contribution of solid particulates versus soluble fractions on the overall hazard3. While there is an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) guidance document (GD) for evaluating the ecotoxicity of ‘difficult to test substances’2, that GD was not designed to consider MNs and could be interpreted to intentionally exclude particulate materials (that is, MNs) from aquatic toxicity exposures. Thus, one of the early questions in nanotechnology environmental health and safety research was to what extent currently available standard methods can be used to assess the ecotoxicological risks and environmental behaviours of MNs4. An OECD workshop (Berlin 20135) concluded that new MN-specific test guidelines (TGs) and GDs were required to address the fundamentally different environmental behaviour (for example, agglomeration, dissolution, transformation) of MNs in standardized testing. It was also concluded that standard ecotoxicological test methods should be acceptable to evaluate MNs after certain amendments6,7, but additional discussion was needed to reach consensus on what modifications are required or allowed.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by German Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety under the projects FKZ 3713 65 406 and Refoplan 3719 664 010; the US Army Environmental Quality/Installations Research Program and SafeRapidNano congressional interest; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada Strategic Partnership Grants for Projects (STPGP) grant to G.G.G. (grant no. 463674); NSERC, Environment Canada and National Research Council of Canada Nanotechnology Initiative (grant no. RES0002319); and Alberta Innovates Technology Futures nanoWorks collaborative research agreement (grant no. 200900065).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biosystems and Biomaterials Division, Material Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA

    Elijah Joel Petersen

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta and National Research Council of Canada Nanotechnology Initiative, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Greg Gerard Goss

  3. Department of Environmental Geosciences (EDGE), Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Frank von der Kammer

  4. US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Environmental Laboratory, Vicksburg, MS, USA

    Alan James Kennedy

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Correspondence to Elijah Joel Petersen.

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Petersen, E.J., Goss, G.G., von der Kammer, F. et al. New guidance brings clarity to environmental hazard and behaviour testing of nanomaterials. Nat. Nanotechnol. 16, 482–483 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-021-00889-1

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