Toxicology Related to Nanoparticles – Challenges and Future Prospects

As the nano-world continues to evolve, nanotechnology offers tremendous potential in everyday goods and creating future, environmentally friendly technologies. The advantages of nanotechnology are being realized in various areas, including engineering, medicine, biology, the environment, and communication. However, nanomaterials production is expected to increase exponentially in the next few years, resulting in significant difficulties linked to their potentially harmful impacts on human health and the environment. Furthermore, the detrimental effect of the toxicity of nanomaterials on human health is one of the industry's most critical problems as it works to exhaust its supply of nano-products. The use of nanomaterials in biological applications is the scenario with the most significant risk. Therefore, the investigation of nanotoxicity and its interaction with biomolecules continues, as are many other projects. On the other hand, assessing and validating nanotoxicity in a biological system are complex tasks. This chapter aims to examine the difficulties associated with evaluating the toxicity of nanomaterials. The evaluation of toxicity and the problems encountered in assessing the effect on biological systems are historic. The findings of in-vitro, in-vivo, and in-silico investigations on the toxicity of engineered nanomaterials are described in this chapter. The various toxicity evaluation methods each have challenges that researchers must overcome when evaluating nanomaterials in powder form, solution-based approaches, and when interacting with biological systems. The evaluation tools and characterization methods are critical in overcoming the difficulties, while the cytotoxic tests consider nanoparticle form, morphology, and size. 

Keywords: Nanotechnology, Nanoparticles, Nanotoxicity, In-vitro, In-vivo.