Genotoxicity evaluation of multiwalled carbon nanotubes: in vivo studies in mice

Abstract

The toxicity of carbon nanoparticles in recent years has attracted much attention due to their active use in industry, medicine and agriculture, which brings not only obvious benefits, but also potential danger to the environment and human health. Getting into the natural environment, bioaccumulating and bioconcentrating in them, carbon nanotubes pose a real threat to mammals, since due to their high migration ability they can penetrate the food chain of animals and humans. Therefore, the aim of this study was to study the genotoxicity of carbon nanotubes in in vivo experiments on laboratory mice. For this, based on the method of single cell alkaline gel electrophoresis assay, studies were conducted to determine the effect of aqueous colloidal solutions of multiwalled carbon nanotubes on genotoxicity towards various tissues in laboratory mice. During these acute and subacute in vivo experiments we have established that orally introduced multiwalled carbon nanotubes colloids damage deoxyribonucleic acid in various organs. In particular, 0.5 mg of multiwalled carbon nanotubes administered daily for 21 days have a prominent genotoxic effect. Thus, the obtained results have illustrated that multiwalled carbon nanotubes can potentially affect the genetic material in mammals, orally administered nanotubes increase the rate of nuclear deoxyribonucleic acid destruction.