%0 Journal Article
%T Should Experimental Chemists Be Doing More to Help Evaluate the Toxicological Potential of Nanoparticles?
%A Karel D. Klika
%J ISRN Nanomaterials
%D 2013
%R 10.1155/2013/801242
%X More general testing of nanoparticles (NP) for properties that are amenable towards biological activity, and thus potentially conducive to nanotoxicity, should be conducted on a broader scale by experimental chemists to help assess the pernicious threat that NP may present to human health or to the environment. For example, evaluation by measuring NP-biomolecule bioaffinity using techniques such as mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is advocated, thereby echoing a similar call to computational and theoretical chemists to expand their studies and make at least part of their work, where feasible, relevant to nanotoxicity. The materials peculiar and intrinsic to the nanotechnology industry are often composed of particles with at least one dimension in the range 1¨C100£¿nm, thereby designating these materials as nanoparticles (NP). NP are used for all manners of applications [1¨C4]: for example, in the chemical industry as catalysts, in medicine as drug delivery devices and imaging agents, and in a wide range of consumer products such as car tires, sports equipment, and even personal care products such as sunscreens and cosmetics. Indeed, the growth of the nanotechnology industry has been explosive, and the entire market is expected to realize a multitrillion dollar valuation by 2015 [1, 5, 6]. Thus, NP have the potential to become as ubiquitous and pervasive in the anthropogenic world¡ªand as an inevitable consequence in the natural world too¡ªas plastics are presently [7]. However, NP can be derived from a broad range of chemical compositions and are not related by anything other than the one physical attribute. Moreover, NP, relative to bulk material of the same chemical composition, possess unusual properties due to their size [1, 8, 9], which is the very essence of what makes them so useful and desirable in the first place. But these peculiar properties can also potentially give rise to unexpected deleterious health and safety effects [1, 3, 5, 10] as well as rendering the materials difficult to analyze [5, 11, 12] or even to characterize comprehensively, an aspect which is of vital importance for valid and meaningful nanotoxicological assessments [1, 5, 11, 12]. Additionally, various NP formulations (i.e., NP of the same chemical composition but of differing size, geometry, aggregation, surface properties, and so forth or other attributes arising from the manner of their preparation) consequently can also have very different properties to each other [1, 8, 9] and thus too differing toxicological effects [1, 3, 8, 10, 11, 13].
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.nanomaterials/2013/801242/