Report: relationship of physical-chemical properties and aquatic toxicity for grouping of nanomaterials
The German Environmental Protection Agency (UBA) has published a report aiming to develop a concept for the grouping of engineered nanomaterials by their ecotoxicological effects on algae, daphnids and fish embryos. The report found that it is impossible to build meaningful grouping hypotheses based on one physical-chemical property alone. It proposes that sets of parameters and additional physical-chemical properties need to be considered.
The report suggests that to further advance grouping concepts for regulatory testing, the following aspects should be researched:
- Surface modifications
- Substitution of the fish embryo test which reveals to be of low sensitivity
- Adaptation of methods for the determination of reactivity
- A detailed analysis of the kinetic of selected physical-chemical parameters during tests such as agglomeration behavior, zeta-potential, reactivity and solubility
- Increase in the number of effect values per nanomaterial and test organism to achieve more robust datasets for statistical analyses
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