Engineered Nanomaterials: Safety and Health Hazard

Abstract

Sanjay Singh and Ashutosh Kumar

An exponential growth in nanotechnology, an enabling technology, has led to a rapid progress in diverse areas including medicine, manufacturing, personal care products, ground water remediation, removal of toxic contaminants from air streams, electronics and energy production.

Due to the large production and widespread use in consumer products, it is expected that ENMs will be released into aquatic, terrestrial, and atmospheric environments through washing and disposal, where their fate and behaviour are still largely unknown. This could lead to unexpected and unanticipated consequences to environment and human health.Humans get exposed to ENMs at various steps of its synthesis (laboratory);manufacture (industry), use (consumer products, devices, medicines etc.) and the environment (through disposal). Due to the concerns over nanomaterial risks, there has been a dramatic increase in focused safety research. The present review provides a summary of the published findings with regard to the (1) nanomaterial exposure;(2) hazard posed by nanomaterial to humans and the environment (3) the present discrepancies in our understanding of risk. Also, the nanomaterials induced pulmonary, dermal, systemic, environmental, brain, cardiovascular toxicity and carcinogenicity has been discussed in detail.

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