Proposal for a tiered dietary bioaccumulation testing strategy for engineered nanomaterials using fish

Abstract

The scientific community has invested effort into standardising methodologies for the regulatory ecotoxicity testing of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs), but the practical requirements for bioaccumulation testing of ENMs have been given less attention. A strategy for a tiered approach to bioaccumulation testing of ENMs using fish is proposed, with recommendations for its implementation by regulatory agencies. The strategy recognises that testing the many shapes, sizes and chemistries of ENMs as new substances in vivo would be an unrealistic workload. The approach therefore includes grouping/read-across methods and tools to screen out ENMs of negligible/low bioaccumulation potential. The strategy proposes reductions of animal use for in vivo testing and with greater consideration of in vitro methods. The first tier uses dissolution in water or lipids and particle settling rates as environmental chemistry triggers for ‘ENMs of concern’. The first tier also involves a weight of evidence from these tests, plus using existing data sets from selected literature that meet data quality criteria for ENMs. Tier 2 involves new data generation using in silico models now being validated for ENMs, including QSARs and systems biology tools. Tier 2 also includes using existing experimental data, and an option to collect new data. These data can be on soils/sediments, microbial degradation, and bioaccumulation studies on invertebrates or fish cell lines. In tier 3, an in chemico digestibility assay simulating the gut lumen of fish is proposed to identify the bioaccessible fractions from an oral exposure to ENMs. If the digestibility assay is positive, then in vitro gut sacs from rainbow trout can be used to confirm accumulation by the gut mucosa. Only if both these tests in tier 3 are positive would the work proceed to the final in vivo test (tier 4) which is essentially the OECD TG 305 method for dietary bioaccumulation testing using fish, with some caveats and recommendations for ENMs. These include considerations of terminology, how to prepare contaminated food for dietary exposures, the additional controls and endpoints for ENMs, measuring ENMs in food and tissues to confirm the exposure, and the limitations of any subsequent calculation of the bioaccumulation potential.