Abstract
The world is living a pandemic situation derived from the worldwide spreading of SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19. Facemasks have proven to be one of the most effective prophylactic measures to avoid the infection that has made that wearing of facemasks has become mandatory in most of the developed countries. Silver and graphene nanoparticles have proven to have antimicrobial properties and are used as coating of these facemasks to increase the effectivity of the textile fibres. In the case of silver nanoparticles, we have estimated that in a real scenario the systemic (internal) exposure derived from wearing these silver nanoparticle facemasks would be between 7.0 × 10–5 and 2.8 × 10–4 mg/kg bw/day. In addition, we estimated conservative systemic no effect levels between 0.075 and 0.01 mg/kg bw/day. Therefore, we estimate that the chronic exposure to silver nanoparticles derived form facemasks wearing is safe. In the case of graphene, we detected important gaps in the database, especially regarding toxicokinetics, which prevents the derivation of a systemic no effect level. Nevertheless, the qualitative approach suggests that the risk of dermal repeated exposure to graphene is very low, or even negligible. We estimated that for both nanomaterials, the risk of skin sensitisation and genotoxicity is also negligible.
Highlights
On December 31 2019, World Health Organization (WHO)1 released a note entitled “Pneumonia of unknown cause reported to WHO China Office”2 This initially called pneumonia was soon renamed as COVID-19 and is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (Zhu et al 2020)
The Canada Government released an announcement on May 2, 2021 alerting that facemasks that contain graphene may pose health risks; this announcement was updated on July 13 and on September 28 2021 with lists of model number of graphene-based authorised facemasks
We found in the open literature several in vitro studies assessing the dermal absorption of silver NPs in humans and rats
Summary
On December 31 2019, World Health Organization (WHO) released a note entitled “Pneumonia of unknown cause reported to WHO China Office” This initially called pneumonia was soon renamed as COVID-19 and is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (Zhu et al 2020). Due to the above-stated considerations about the mandatory use of facemasks, since the outbreak of the virus to today there have been, and still there are, hundreds of millions of people regularly wearing facemasks This massive use in general population and in occupational settings raised a concern as regard the safety of the facemasks coated with NMs. the Canada Government released an announcement on May 2, 2021 alerting that facemasks that contain graphene may pose health risks; this announcement was updated on July 13 and on September 28 2021 with lists of model number of graphene-based authorised facemasks..
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