Evaluation of the environmental impact of magnetic nanostructured materials at different trophic levels.

Safety on the use of magnetic nanomaterials (MNMs) has become an active topic of research given all the recent applications of these materials in various fields. It is known that the toxicity of MNMs depends on size, shape, and surface functionalization. In this study, we evaluate the biocompatibility with different aquatic organisms of engineered MNMs-CIT with excellent aqueous dispersion and long-term colloidal stability. Primary producers (the alga ), primary consumers (the rotifer ), and predators (the fish, ) interacted with these materials in acute and sub-chronic toxicity tests. Our results indicate that was the most sensitive taxon to MNMs-CIT. Inhibition of their population growth (IC = 22.84 mg L) elicited cell malformations and increased the content of photosynthetic pigments, likely due to inhibition of cell division (as demonstrated in AFM analysis). For , the acute exposure to MNMs shows no significant mortality. However, adverse effects such as decreased rate of population and altered swimming patterns arise after chronic interaction with MNMs. For organisms on early life stages, their exposure to MNMs results in delayed hatching of eggs, diminished survival of larvae, altered energy resources allocation (measured as the content of total carbohydrates, lipids, and protein), and increased glucose demand. As to our knowledge, this is the first study that includes three different trophic levels to assess the effect of MNMs in aquatic organisms; furthermore, we demonstrated that these MNMs pose hazards on aquatic food webs at low concentrations (few mgL).