The unique characteristics of nanoparticles which are responsible for their myriad applications nevertheless also play an important role in producing toxicological e®ects, due to their massive surface area and surface reactivity, which make them a particularly serious environmental and occupational health risk. Our main objective was to assess the potential impact that nanoparticles may have on release into marine aquatic environments. We prepared nanoparticles by continuous sonication and by ultra¯ltration. Artemia salina was di®erentiated to¯ve life stages based on certain easily distinguished features and were exposed to di®erent concentrations of titanium dioxide and fullerene using 48 h acute toxicity testing. Images of the particle solutions were recorded using TEM and the median lethal concentration was determined in each life stage. Exposure to sonicated nanoparticles shows varied mortalities in di®erent stages of A. salina where as¯ltered solutions showed increasing mortality with increase in concentration. This is meant as a preliminary to more elaborative studies on the e®ect of a wide spectrum of nanoparticle types on a range of representative organisms from a variety of organismal and population levels.
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