“…However, their extensive production and usage lead to a demand for toxicity evaluation as well as assessment of health risks at occupational and environmental settings ( Kessler, 2011 ; Batley et al, 2013 ). Among the various NPs, nickel oxide (NiO) is vastly employed in industrial applications such as metal printing, electronics, ceramics, catalysis, and sensing ( Zhou et al, 2017 ; Sousa et al, 2018 ; Dumala et al, 2019 ; Jaji et al, 2020 ; Taeño et al, 2021 ; Wang et al, 2021 ). Moreover, exposure is common at nickel refineries, metal alloy production sites and at occupational setting where welding is performed ( Klein and Costa, 2015 ; Pesch et al, 2019 ).…”