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Acute toxicity evaluation of nanoparticles mixtures using luminescent bacteria

Environmental Monitoring and Assessment volume 192, Article number: 484 (2020) Cite this article

Abstract

As the application of nanoparticles (NPs) and their release to the environment has increased, it is important to verify their toxicity, with a special emphasis on particle solubilization and the interaction of NP mixtures. In the current study, a model luminescent bacteria, Vibrio fischeri, was employed to test the acute toxicity of individual NPs and their binary mixtures, including metal NPs (ZnNPs, CuNPs) and metal oxide NPs (ZnONPs, CuONPs). The independent action model was used to reflect the synergistic, additive, or antagonistic interactions of binary mixtures of these NPs. The results showed that the median effective concentration (EC50) inhibited the luminescence of V. fischeri were 20.5, 4.1, 11.6, and 118.7 mg L−1 for ZnNPs, CuNPs, ZnONPs, and CuONPs, respectively, suggesting that the toxicity of these NPs to V. fischeri were as the following order: CuNPs > ZnONPs > ZnNPs > CuONPs. The combined effect of NPs were found to be antagonistic for CuNPs-ZnONPs and CuNPs-CuONPs, synergistic for CuONPs-ZnNPs, CuNPs-ZnNPs, and ZnONPs-CuONPs, and additive for ZnNPs-ZnONPs, revealing a complex pattern of possible interactions. The differences of dissolved metal ions partly accounted for the different combined toxicity of binary mixtures of NPs. The findings have important implications for better understanding the true environmental risk of NP mixtures.

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Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC1901000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21577038, 41807462), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2017 M611504), and State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse Foundation (PCRRF17001).

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Author notes

  1. Haijing Zhang and Jianhong Shi contributed equally to this work.

Affiliations

  1. Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Biotransformation of Organic Solid Waste, Shanghai Key Lab for Urban Ecological Processes and Eco-Restoration, School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China

    Haijing Zhang, Jianhong Shi, Yinglong Su & Bing Xie

  2. Shanghai Institute of Pollution Control and Ecological Security, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Haijing Zhang, Jianhong Shi, Yinglong Su, Weiying Li & Bing Xie

  3. State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Weiying Li

  4. Department of Chemistry, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, H3C3J7, Canada

    Kevin J. Wilkinson

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  1. Haijing Zhang
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  2. Jianhong Shi
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  4. Weiying Li
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Correspondence to Bing Xie.

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Zhang, H., Shi, J., Su, Y. et al. Acute toxicity evaluation of nanoparticles mixtures using luminescent bacteria. Environ Monit Assess 192, 484 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-08444-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-08444-6

Keywords

  • Metal nanoparticles
  • Metal oxide nanoparticles
  • Mixture toxicity
  • Vibrio fischeri