Concerns about the environmental and human health implications of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are growing with the increased use in consumer and industrial products. Numerous studies have applied life cycle assessments (LCAs) to model the potential environmental and human health impacts of ENMs. Most of them have not included nano-specific emissions (i.e. impacts due to ENM release) and evaluated only non-nanoscale emissions (i.e. impacts due to ENM production). However, both considerations need to be included for more thorough evaluation of the environmental implications of these ENMs. One solution to calculate nano-specific emissions is to derive characterization factors (CF), which are comprised of information on fate, exposure, and effect factors for ENMs. This paper seeks to provide size, coating, and test medium dependent effect factors (EF) for silver nanoparticles (nAg), one of the most commercialized ENMs, using the USEtox model. A comprehensive literature review is performed, and 366 toxicity data points are used to derive physicochemical property based EFs. EFs are modeled based on different scenarios including species and trophic level HC₅₀ calculations under regular (using EC₅₀ values only) and cumulative (using LC₅₀, EC₅₀ and IC₅₀ values) cases. Different EFs are calculated based on varying size, coating, and testing medium combinations and presented in the form of matrices. Results suggest that larger nAg have lower EF, and coating is an important consideration in toxicity assessment. Regardless of specific properties, an EF range is proposed as 8035–14 675 PAF m³ kg⁻¹. Future work should combine fate and exposure factors to calculate CF for further application to LCA.

中文翻译：

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新兴的研究者系列：计算银纳米颗粒的尺寸和涂层相关影响因子，以告知表征因子开发过程，以用于生命周期评估

随着在消费类和工业产品中使用的增加，对工程纳米材料（ENM）对环境和人类健康的影响的关注日益增加。许多研究已经应用生命周期评估（LCA）来建模ENM的潜在环境和人类健康影响。他们中的大多数没有包括特定于纳米的排放（即，由于ENM释放引起的影响），仅评估了非纳米级的排放（即，因ENM产生的影响）。但是，这两项考虑都需要包括在内，以便更全面地评估这些ENM的环境影响。一种计算纳米比排放的解决方案是得出表征因子（CF），该因子由有关ENM的命运，暴露和影响因子的信息组成。本文力图使用USEtox模型为银纳米颗粒（nAg）（商业化程度最高的ENM之一）提供尺寸，涂层和测试介质相关的影响因子（EF）。进行了全面的文献综述，并使用366个毒性数据点来得出基于理化性质的EF。EF是根据不同的情景建模的，包括常规（使用EC _50）下物种和营养级的HC ₅₀计算值）和累积（使用LC ₅₀，EC ₅₀和IC ₅₀值）情况。根据不同的尺寸，涂层和测试介质组合，可以计算出不同的EF，并以矩阵形式表示。结果表明，较大的nAg具有较低的EF，因此涂层是毒性评估中的重要考虑因素。不管具体性能如何，EF范围都建议为8035–14 675 PAF m ³ kg ^-1。未来的工作应结合命运和暴露因素来计算CF，以进一步应用于LCA。