Although thousands of different nanoparticles (NPs) have been identified and synthesized to date, well-defined, consistent guidelines to control their exposure and evaluate their potential toxicity have yet to be fully established. As potential applications of nanotechnology in numerous fields multiply, there is an increased awareness of the issue of nanomaterials’ toxicity among scientists and producers managing them. An updated inventory of customer products containing NPs estimates that they currently number over 5.000; ten years ago, they were one fifth of this. More often than not, products bear no information regarding the presence of NPs in the indicated list of ingredients or components. Consumers are therefore largely unaware of the extent to which nanomaterials have entered our lives, let alone their potential risks. Moreover, the lack of certainties with regard to the safe use of NPs is curbing their applications in the biomedical field, especially in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, where they are performing outstandingly but are not yet being exploited as much as they could. The production of radical oxygen species is a predominant mechanism leading to metal NPs-driven carcinogenesis. The release of particularly reactive metal ions capable of crossing cell membranes has also been implicated in NPs toxicity.

In this review we discuss the origin, behavior and biological toxicity of different metal NPs with the aim of rationalizing related health hazards and calling attention to toxicological concerns involved in their increasingly widespread use.

尽管迄今为止已经鉴定和合成了数千种不同的纳米粒子 (NP)，但尚未完全建立明确、一致的控制其暴露和评估其潜在毒性的指南。随着纳米技术在众多领域的潜在应用成倍增加，管理纳米材料的科学家和生产者对纳米材料毒性问题的认识越来越高。包含 NP 的客户产品的更新清单估计它们目前数量超过 5.000；十年前，他们是这个数字的五分之一。通常情况下，产品没有关于指定成分或成分列表中是否存在 NP 的信息。因此，消费者在很大程度上不知道纳米材料进入我们生活的程度，更不用说它们的潜在风险。而且，在安全使用 NP 方面缺乏确定性正在限制它们在生物医学领域的应用，特别是在癌症的诊断和治疗方面，它们表现出色，但尚未得到尽可能多的利用。自由基氧物质的产生是导致金属纳米粒子驱动的致癌作用的主要机制。能够穿过细胞膜的特别活泼的金属离子的释放也与 NPs 毒性有关。自由基氧物质的产生是导致金属纳米粒子驱动的致癌作用的主要机制。能够穿过细胞膜的特别活泼的金属离子的释放也与 NPs 毒性有关。自由基氧物质的产生是导致金属纳米粒子驱动的致癌作用的主要机制。能够穿过细胞膜的特别活泼的金属离子的释放也与 NPs 毒性有关。

在这篇综述中，我们讨论了不同金属 NPs 的起源、行为和生物毒性，旨在合理化相关的健康危害，并引起人们对它们日益广泛使用所涉及的毒理学问题的关注。