Short- and Long-Term Consequences of Exposure to Metal Oxide Nanoparticles

Project Collaborators:

• Dr. Sara Brenner, College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at Albany
• Dr. Günter Oberdörster

Deposition of aerosolized gold nanoparticles onto
a Transwell filter using the NAVICT system.

Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are diverse in terms of their chemistry and morphology, thus presenting a challenge in understanding risks to human health following occupational or environmental exposures. The major routes of exposure for ENMs include skin, ingestion, and inhalation. We are conducting acute and subchronic inhalation exposures in rats to aerosols of amorphous silica, aluminum oxide, and cerium oxide nanoparticle-containing slurries that are used in the chemical-mechanical planarization process in the semiconductor industry to evaluate the magnitude and persistence of inflammatory responses and to understand the organ-specific retention and translocation of the nanoparticles.

Clusters of CdSe-ZnS semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots) in rat
liver vasculature, as revealed via TEM, following intravenous injection.

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