Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technologies, Technology and Society Laboratory, Lerchenfeldstrasse 5, 9014 St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technologies, Technology and Society Laboratory, Lerchenfeldstrasse 5, 9014 St. Gallen, Switzerland.
NanoImpact. 2021 Apr;22:100312. doi: 10.1016/j.impact.2021.100312. Epub 2021 Mar 26.
Uncertainties remain regarding the potential environmental risks of engineered nanomaterials, reflecting missing information on both the exposure and the hazard sides. Probabilistic material flow analysis (PMFA) is a useful exposure assessment tool that maps the flows of a substance through its lifecycle towards the environment, taking into account the uncertainties associated with the input data. In the last years, several refinements have been made to the original PMFA method, increasing its complexity with respect to systems dynamics, fate during recycling and reprocessing and forms of release. In this work, an integrated dynamic probabilistic material flow analysis (IDPMFA) was developed that combines all separate advancements of the method in one overarching software code. The new method was used to assess the forms in which nano-Ag, nano-TiO and nano-ZnO are released into air, soils and surface water. Each European country (EU28, Norway and Switzerland) was studied from the year 2000 to the year 2020. The present model includes new assessments of the forms in which nano-ZnO is released into the environment and of the flows out of reprocessing (last step of recycling) of nano-Ag, nano-TiO and nano-ZnO towards both technical and environmental compartments. The forms of ZnO released to different compartments vary greatly with different proportions between pristine, dissolved, matrix-embedded and transformed forms. The same applies for the forms of the other ENMs released after reprocessing, where different processes result in very different distributions between the various forms. The country-specific assessment showed that it is mainly the different solid waste treatment schemes that influence the distribution to final environmental sinks. Overall, the results of IDPMFA show the great importance of considering the full life cycle of nanoproducts including the different stages of recycling, the differences between countries, and the forms of the released materials. The results from the integrated model will provide useful input information for environmental fate models and for environmental risk assessments.
关于工程纳米材料的潜在环境风险，仍存在不确定性，这反映了暴露和危害两方面的信息缺失。概率物质流分析 (PMFA) 是一种有用的暴露评估工具，它可以绘制物质在其生命周期中通过环境的流动情况，同时考虑与输入数据相关的不确定性。在过去的几年中，对原始 PMFA 方法进行了几次改进，增加了其相对于系统动力学、回收和再处理过程中的命运以及释放形式的复杂性。在这项工作中，开发了一种集成动态概率物质流分析 (IDPMFA)，该方法将方法的所有单独进展结合在一个总体软件代码中。新方法用于评估纳米银、纳米二氧化钛和纳米氧化锌以何种形式释放到空气中、土壤中和地表水中。从 2000 年到 2020 年，研究了每个欧洲国家（欧盟 28 个国家、挪威和瑞士）。目前的模型包括对纳米氧化锌以何种形式释放到环境中和纳米银、纳米二氧化钛和纳米氧化锌在再处理（回收的最后一步）过程中流出到技术和环境隔室的新评估。不同隔室释放的氧化锌形式因原始、溶解、基质嵌入和转化形式之间的不同比例而有很大差异。经过再处理后释放的其他 ENM 的形式也是如此，不同的过程导致各种形式之间的分布非常不同。特定国家的评估表明，主要是不同的固体废物处理方案影响了最终环境汇的分布。总体而言，IDPMFA 的结果表明，考虑到包括回收不同阶段在内的纳米产品的整个生命周期、国家之间的差异以及释放材料的形式，这一点非常重要。综合模型的结果将为环境归宿模型和环境风险评估提供有用的输入信息。
