Importance and health hazards of nanoparticles used in the food industry

Abstract

Nanoparticles are considered magic bullets because of their unique properties. Nowadays, the use of nanoparticles has emerged in almost every field of science and technology, owing to its potential of revolutionizing specific fields. In the field of food science and technology, the use of nanoparticles is being studied in diverse areas, starting with the harvesting of crops up to final food consumption. With the increased usage of nanoparticles in day-to-day life, concern over their safety has arisen in everyone’s mind. There is an imbalance between the increase in research to identify new nanoparticle applications and their safety, and this has triggered pressure on scientists to identify the possible effects of nanoparticles on human health. There are numerous studies on the use of nanotechnology in food and the effect of nanoparticles on human health, but there is a vacuum in the literature in terms of the combined analysis of such studies. This review is an attempt to present and analyze different studies on the use and the safety of nanoparticles in food.

Effects of Ag contents on the microstructure and SERS performance of self-grown Ag nanoparticles/Mo–Ag alloy films

“…Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technique, a highly sensitive fingerprint identification tool [1], has shown enormous application potential in various fields such as biomedical science [2], environmental monitoring [3], food and drug safety [4][5][6], catalysis [7], etc. Due to the localized surface plasmonic resonance effect, SERS provides a large Raman signal enhancement for molecules close to the plasma nanostructures [8,9].…”

Effects of substrate properties and sputtering methods on self-formation of Ag particles on the Ag–Mo(Zr) alloy films

“…With the increasingly severe service conditions of microdevices, the requirements for the performance of the thin-film materials have gradually increased, leading to extensive applications such as nonenzyme glucose sensors [1], highstrength and high-conductivity films [2], antibacterial films [3], semiconductor interconnect [4], wear-resistant films [5], packaging film materials [6] and so on. There are many methods to prepare thin films, such as electrical deposition [7], arc evaporation [8], wet-laid and spunlace process [9], arc discharge [10] and son on [11], but these methods are not suitable for preparing low solid solubility alloy films.…”

Harmful effects of metal(loid) oxide nanoparticles

“…Although animal testing is still the predominant model use for the risk assessment of chemicals (Hartung and Rovida 2009 ), due to the pressure from public opinion and legal demand, supported by ethical reasons, the replacement of animals for cheaper and more human-relevant alternatives have been proposed based on the use of cell lines. Thus, different mammalian cell lines have been used in toxicity assays with MOx NPs (Al 2 O 3 , CuO, NiO, TiO 2 and ZnO), comprising models of different human systems, such as respiratory, digestive, renal, immune and skin (Ivask et al 2014 ; Naseer et al 2018 ; Czyzowska and Barbasz 2020 ).…”