Table 6 General characteristics and risks of nanoparticles
From: Assessing the nanotechnology on the grounds of costs, benefits, and risks
1. | Nanomaterial properties | Risk description |
2. | Aggregation | Aggregation of nanoparticles pose considerable threat as it leads to phase changes, reduced resistance towards corrosion, and increase in the solubility causing the weathering of structures [117, 118]. |
3. | Reactivity | The spontaneous degradation reactions of nanoparticles may lead to alterations in the functional group-based properties of compounds [119, 120]. |
4. | Impurity | High reactivity of nanoparticles makes them react with impurities changing their outcomes; therefore, these are encapsulated with non-reactive species [121, 122]. |
5. | Contaminant dissociation | The contaminations in the metal and nonmetal impurities like sulfur, rubidium, and yttrium of nanoparticles are significant risk agents [123, 124]. |
6. | Size | The outstanding size-based properties of nanoparticles are severely affected by their agglomeration nature [125, 126]. |
7. | Disposal and recycling | The disposal policies of nanomaterials are not well defined, and toxicity-related statistics are not much available for nanomaterials. Therefore, the ambiguity in the effects of nanomaterials has to be resolved to develop significant disposal policies [127, 128]. |