Manufactured nanomaterials (MNMs) are increasingly incorporated into everyday products and thus are entering the environment via manufacturing, product use, and waste disposal. Still, the understanding of MNM environmental hazards and fates lags MNM industry growth. To catch up, keep pace, and potentially influence future MNM safe design strategies, rapid and environmentally-relevant safety assessments are needed. Bacteria are important ecological nanotoxicology targets to consider when assessing MNM safety because bacteria are exposed to MNMs in water, sewage, soils, and sediments, wherein they influence MMN fates; bacteria can also be impacted�with potential health and ecosystem consequences. Bacteria could be useful for assessing MNMs and thus for promoting effective management of the environmental risks of this rapidly growing industry, but appropriate protocols and policies would need to be instituted. Evidence regarding MNM effects on bacteria, and how such understanding can be relevant to judging impacts at scales to ecosystems, are synthesized and presented. Such evidence includes that: MNMs can reduce bacterial diversity; MNMs can alter bacterial physiology and thus nutrient cycling; bacteria affect MNM physical characteristics and partitioning; bacteria may degrade MNMs; bacteria can initiate MNM trophic transfer to higher organisms.

Importance of bacteria when assessing manufactured nanomaterial environmental hazards and fates

247th National Meeting (2014)

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