Abstract
Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are currently widely incorporated in the outdoor urban environmental fabric and numerous new applications and products containing ENMs are expected in the future. As has been shown repeatedly, products containing ENMs have the potential, at some point in their lifetime, to release ENMs into their surrounding environment. However, the expanding body in environmental nanomaterial research has not yet shifted toward ENMs in the context of the complex outdoor urban environment. This is especially surprising because the world's human populations are on a steady march toward more and more urbanization and technological development, accompanied with increased applications for ENMs in the outdoor urban environment. Our objective for this paper is therefore to review, assess, and provide new information in this emerging field. We provide an overview of nanomaterials (NMs, encompassing both ENMs and incidental nanomaterials, INMs) that are likely to be released in the urban environment from outdoor sources by discussing 1) the applications of ENMs that may lead to release of ENMs in urban areas, 2) the recently published data on the release of ENMs from novel nano-enabled applications in the outdoor urban environment, 3) the available literature on the occurrence of INMs in the atmosphere and within/on dust particles, and 4) the potential pathways and fate of NMs in the outdoor urban environment. This review is then followed by three case studies demonstrating the importance of NMs in the outdoor urban environment. The first and second case studies illustrate the occurrence of NMs in urban dust and stormwater ponds, respectively, whereas the third case study discusses the lessons learned from the release of NMs (e.g. Pt, ph and Rh) from automotive vehicle catalytic convertors. This article ends with a discussion of the research priorities needed to advance this emerging field of "outdoor urban nanomaterials" and to assess the potential risks of NMs in the context of urban environments.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 740-753 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Science of the Total Environment |
| Volume | 557-558 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 1 2016 |
Funding
This report was prepared in part as a result of work sponsored by the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) financial assistance number NA10OAR4170073 . Grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF, 1437307 , 1553909 ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States under NSF Cooperative Agreement EF-0830093 , entitled Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEINT); and the National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 41130525 , 41522111 and 41271473 ) provided major financial support for this study. Additional support was provided by the SmartState Center for Environmental Nanoscience and Risk at the University of South Carolina and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities , via the Open Foundation of East China Normal University . The authors thank Stephen McCartney and Christopher Winkler in the Nanoscale Characterization and Fabrication Laboratory at Virginia Tech for assistance with electron microscopes used in this study, and finally the NSF -funded National Center for Earth and Environmental Nanotechnology Infrastructure at Virginia Tech ( 1542100 ). Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, or the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium or NOAA. Additionally, South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium and NOAA may copyright any work that is subject to copyright and was developed, or for which ownership was purchased, under financial assistance number NA10OAR4170073. The South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium and NOAA reserve a royalty-free, nonexclusive and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work for Federal purposes, and to authorize others to do so. This work has not been subjected to EPA review and no official endorsement should be inferred.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| 1553909, 1437307 | |
| EF-0830093 | |
| National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | NA10OAR4170073 |
| South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium | |
| South Carolina State University | |
| National Natural Science Foundation of China | 41130525, 41522111, 41271473 |
Keywords
- Atmosphere
- Engineered nanomaterials
- Incidental nanomaterials
- Storm water
- Surface water
- Urban environment
