Nanotoxicology: characterizing the scientific literature, 2000-2007

Abstract

Understanding the toxicity of nanomaterials and nano-enabled products is important for human and environmental health and safety as well as public acceptance. Assessing the state of knowledge about nanotoxicology is an important step in promoting comprehensive understanding of the health and environmental implications of these new materials. To this end, we employed bibliometric techniques to characterize the prevalence and distribution of the current scientific literature. We found that the nano-toxicological literature is dispersed across a range of disciplines and sub-fields; focused on in vitro testing; often does not specify an exposure pathway; and tends to emphasize acute toxicity and mortality rather than chronic exposure and morbidity. Finally, there is very little research on consumer products, particularly on their environmental fate, and most research is on the toxicity of basic nanomaterials. The implications for toxicologists, regulators and social scientists studying nanotechnology and society are discussed.

Fig. 1

Global distribution of published nanotoxicology research by institution

Fig. 2

Number of articles relating to material and type of study

Fig. 3

Number of articles by material type and exposure pathway (Collected from ICON)

Fig. 4

Number of articles dealing with ecosystem and material type (Collected from ICON)

Fig. 5

The number of toxicology articles by stage in life-cycle (Collected from SciFinder)