A Toxicologic Review of Quantum Dots: Toxicity Depends on Physicochemical and Environmental Factors

By Ron C. Hardman. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2005

2,183 citations recorded by the source corpus.

As a growing applied science, nanotechnology has considerable global socioeconomic value, and the benefits afforded by nanoscale materials and processes are expected to have significant impacts on almost all industries and all areas of society. A diverse array of engineered nanoscale products and processes have emerged [e.g., carbon nanotubes, fullerene derivatives, and quantum dots (QDs)], with widespread applications in fields such as medicine, plastics, energy, electronics, and aerospace. With the nanotechnology economy estimated to be valued at $1 trillion by 2012, the prevalence of these materials in society will be increasing, as will the likelihood of exposures. Importantly, the vastness and novelty of the nanotechnology frontier leave many areas unexplored, or underexplored, such as the potential adverse human health effects resulting from exposure to novel nanomaterials. It is within this context that the need for understanding the potentially harmful side effects of these materials becomes clear. The reviewed literature suggests several key points: Not all QDs are alike; engineered QDs cannot be considered a uniform group of substances. QD absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity depend on multiple factors derived from both inherent physicochemical properties and environmental conditions; QD size, charge, concentration, outer coating bioactivity (capping material and functional groups), and oxidative, photolytic, and mechanical stability have each been implicated as determining factors in QD toxicity. Although they offer potentially invaluable societal benefits such as drug targeting and in vivo biomedical imaging, QDs may also pose risks to human health and the environment under certain conditions.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/411b45fe1bfa3c0f588bac581e4efe0ad5e97898

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Citations in the corpus

Interactions of nanomaterials and biological systems: implications to personalized nanomedicine (2012, background): “QDs may create a health hazard due to toxic heavy metal elements such as cadmium that are incorporated into the QDs [205].”
Environmental Nanoparticles Interactions with Plants: Morphological, Physiological, and Genotoxic Aspects (2012, background): “The concern of NPs exposure is due to some important issues, as these materials half-lives that may be months to possibly years, the increase on concentration of anthropic substances since NPs are often produced in a large scale, and because this material is expected to be accumulated and transforme”
Green Synthesis and Characterization of Gold Nanoparticles Using Onion ( Allium cepa ) Extract (2011, background): “Production of nanoparticles under nontoxic green conditions is of vital importance to address growing concerns on the overall toxicity of nanoparticles for medical and technological applications [11-13].”
Detection and characterization of engineered nanoparticles in food and the environment (2008, background): “It has been reported that different types of nanoparticles can cause cytotoxicity and cross cellular layers (Shiohara et al. 2004; Koch et al. 2005; Chen and von Mikecz 2005; Hardman 2006; Brunner et al. 2006), as well as accumulate in tissue (Bullard-Dillard et al.”
Quantitative characterization of nanoparticle agglomeration within biological media (2012, positive): “Hardman (2006) have shown a variance in dispersion across a range of quantum dot types and Ji et al. (2010) have shown that dispersion of TiO2 nanoparticles varied significantly in six different types of media.”