Materials Measurement Science Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology , Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899-8371, United States.
ACS Nano. 2014 Apr 22;8(4):3128-35. doi: 10.1021/nn501108g. Epub 2014 Mar 27.
The risks and benefits of nanomaterials in foods and food contact materials receive conflicting international attention across expert stakeholder groups as well as in news media coverage and published research. Current nanomaterial characterization is complicated by the lack of accepted approaches to measure exposure-relevant occurrences of suspected nanomaterials in food and by broad definitions related to food processing and additive materials. Therefore, to improve understanding of risk and benefit, analytical methods are needed to identify what materials, new or traditional, are "nanorelevant" with respect to biological interaction and/or uptake during alimentary tract transit. Challenges to method development in this arena include heterogeneity in nanomaterial composition and morphology, food matrix complexity, alimentary tract diversity, and analytical method limitations. Clear problem formulation is required to overcome these and other challenges and to improve understanding of biological fate in facilitating the assessment of nanomaterial safety or benefit, including sampling strategies relevant to food production/consumption and alimentary tract transit. In this Perspective, we discuss critical knowledge gaps that must be addressed so that measurement methods can better inform risk management and public policy.
食品和食品接触材料中纳米材料的风险和益处受到国际专家利益相关者群体以及新闻媒体报道和已发表研究的争议。由于缺乏用于测量食品中可疑纳米材料的暴露相关出现的公认方法，以及与食品加工和添加剂材料相关的广泛定义，当前的纳米材料特性描述变得复杂。因此，为了增进对风险和益处的了解，需要分析方法来确定在消化道转运过程中与生物相互作用和/或摄取有关的哪些材料（新型或传统材料）是“与纳米相关”的。该领域方法开发面临的挑战包括纳米材料组成和形态的异质性、食品基质的复杂性、消化道的多样性以及分析方法的局限性。需要明确的问题制定来克服这些和其他挑战，并增进对生物命运的理解，从而促进纳米材料安全性或益处的评估，包括与食品生产/消费和消化道转运相关的采样策略。在本观点中，我们讨论了必须解决的关键知识空白，以便测量方法能够更好地为风险管理和公共政策提供信息。
