Imaging of engineered nanoparticles and their aggregates under fully liquid conditions in environmental matrices.

The increasing industrial production of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) raises concern over their safety to humans and the environment. There is a lack of knowledge regarding the environmental fate and impact of ENPs and in situ methods are needed to investigate e.g.

Detection and characterization of engineered nanoparticles in food and the environment.

Nanotechnology is developing rapidly and, in the future, it is expected that increasingly more products will contain some sort of nanomaterial. However, to date, little is known about the occurrence, fate and toxicity of nanoparticles. The limitations in our knowledge are partly due to the lack of methodology for the detection and characterisation of engineered nanoparticles in complex matrices, i.

Probabilistic risk assessment for linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS) in sewage sludge used on agricultural soil.

Deterministic and probabilistic risk assessments were developed for commercial LAS in agricultural soil amended with sewage sludge. The procedure done according to ILSI Europe's Conceptual Framework [Schowanek, D., Carr, R.

Construction and evaluation of a transgenic hsp16-GFP-lacZ Caenorhabditis elegans strain for environmental monitoring.

A novel integrated transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans strain (PC161) incorporates a double reporter construct with green fluorescent protein (GFP) and lacZ genes fused in-frame into the second exon of the hsp16-1 gene. This construct also includes the Simian Virus 40 (SV40) nuclear localization signal such that the fusion protein accumulates in the nuclei of expressing cells. The PC161 strain was used to monitor the effects of several known stressors, including heat, cadmium, and microwave radiation.