Invertebrate Models to Assess Environmental Exposures and Toxicity of Silver Nanoparticles

Abstract

Over the past few decades, nanoparticles of noble metals such as silver and gold have been found to demonstrate significantly distinct physical, chemical, and biological properties from their bulk counterparts. Nano-sized particles of less than 100 nm in diameter are attracting the scientific community for the wide range of new applications in various fields including biophysics, material and medical sciences. As manufacturing of nano-sized particles is increasing, their dissemination in natural environments is also at an increase. Finding the adverse effects of such nano-sized particles found in the environment on different faunal species is thus of utmost importance. In the present paper, toxic effects of silver nanoparticles on different invertebrate models have been presented so as to have a view about the type of the damage posed by them and the efficacy of using invertebrate models for such assessments.