Advanced Analytical Techniques for the Measurement of Nanomaterials in Food and Agricultural Samples: A Review

Abstract

Nanotechnology offers substantial prospects for the development of state-of-the-art products and applications for agriculture, water treatment, and food industry. Profuse use of nanoproducts will bring potential benefits to farmers, the food industry, and consumers, equally. However, after end-user applications, these products and residues will find their way into the environment. Therefore, discharged nanomaterials (NMs) need to be identified and quantified to determine their ecotoxicity and the levels of exposure. Detection and characterization of NMs and their residues in the environment, particularly in food and agricultural products, have been limited, as no single technique or method is suitable to identify and quantify NMs. In this review, we have discussed the available literature concerning detection, characterization, and measurement techniques for NMs in food and agricultural matrices, which include chromatography, flow field fractionation, electron microscopy, light scattering, and autofluorescence techniques, among others.

Current limitations and challenges in nanowaste detection, characterisation and monitoring

“…Once ENMs enter the environment or waste streams, their characterisation and detection can principally be divided into three steps (Bandyopadhyay et al, 2013;Singh et al, 2014): 1st step: sampling; including sample preparation and preservation. 2nd step: sample pre-fractionation and/or digestion, followed by separation.…”

“…Similarly, Kammer et al (2012) stated that examples of full quantitative analysis of nanoparticulate fractions and thorough method evaluation are lacking. Table 1 Key parameters for characterisation of nanomaterials in the environment (Hassellöv and Kaegi, 2009;Tiede et al, 2008;Ulrich et al, 2012) and proposed analytical methods (adapted from Bandyopadhyay et al, 2013;Salomon, 2011;Sherwood, 2009;Stephan and Hineman, 2014). …”

Analytical approaches to support current understanding of exposure, uptake and distributions of engineered nanoparticles by aquatic and terrestrial organisms

“…Thus, as well as assessing mechanisms for toxicokinetics, the issue of understanding the distribution of ENPs both within target organs and within cells has emerged as an important area of research in ENP ecotoxicology. This has resulted in the application of a range of analytical and imaging-based tools with different spatial resolution and analytical sensitivities to elucidate localisations (Bandyopadhyay et al 2013;von der Kammer et al 2012). A non-exhaustive summary of the properties of some of the key imaging/analysis techniques that have been used to date are summarized in Table 1, with key benefits and limitations summarized in Table 2.…”

“…In reality there is no simple dichotomy between high resolution/low sensitivity versus low resolution/high sensitivity techniques; different techniques offer particular strengths and weaknesses which favours combinatorial or complementary usage (Table 2). Indeed, Bandyopadhyay et al (2013) advocate a hierarchical or tiered approach, and based on the findings from ecotoxicology studies we offer a potential schema in Fig. 3 to illustrate the principle.…”

Sulfonated nanocellulose for the efficient dispersive micro solid-phase extraction and determination of silver nanoparticles in food products

“…In recent years, the fascinating chemical and physical properties of metallic nanoparticles have furthered their use in biology [1], catalysis [2], food technology [3,4] and even analytical chemistry [5]. AgNPs in particular have attracted much attention by virtue of their unique antimicrobial features [6] in relation to other metallic nanoparticles [7].…”