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Human health no-effect levels of TiO2 nanoparticles as a function of their primary size

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Abstract

As engineered nanomaterials are increasingly introduced on the market into a broad range of commodities or nanoproducts, there is a need for operational, reliable tool, enabling to consistently assess the risks and impacts associated with the releases of nanoparticles. The lack of a developed metric that accurately represents their toxic effects while capturing the influence of the most relevant physicochemical properties is one of the major impediments. Here, we investigate the relationships between the toxic responses of nano-sized and micro-sized particles in in vivo toxicological studies and their physicochemical properties. Our results for TiO2 particles indicate statistically significant associations between the primary particle size and their toxicity responses for combined inhalation and ingestion exposure routes, although the numerical values should be considered with care due to the inability to encompass influences from other relevant physicochemical properties like surface coatings. These findings allow for expressing mass-based adverse effect levels as a continuous function of the primary size of particles. This meaningful, exploratory metric can thus be used for screening purposes and pave the way for reaching adaptive, robust risk assessments of nanomaterials, e.g. for setting up consistent threshold levels, as well as consistent life cycle assessments of nanoproducts. We provide examples of such applications.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Tobias Walser, Stefanie Hellweg, Michael Z. Hauschild, Peter Fantke and Brenda Gillespie for the fruitful insights in the course of the work. A.L. gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided by Augustinus Fonden, Oticon Fonden and the 3R Research School of the Technical University of Denmark.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs, Lyngby, Denmark

    Alexis Laurent, Mikołaj Owsianiak & Eldbjørg B. Vea

  2. Department of Pathobiology and Diagnostic Investigation, College of Veterinary Medicine, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Jack R. Harkema

  3. Statistics and Data Analysis Section, Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs, Lyngby, Denmark

    Elisabeth W. Andersen

  4. Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Olivier Jolliet

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  1. Alexis Laurent
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Correspondence to Alexis Laurent.

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Laurent, A., Harkema, J.R., Andersen, E.W. et al. Human health no-effect levels of TiO2 nanoparticles as a function of their primary size. J Nanopart Res 19, 130 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-017-3816-8

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