New publication online: I. Politowski et al.
*New publication online: Politowski et al.*
Politowski, I., Regnery, P., Hennig, M. P., Siebers, N., Ottermanns, R., Schäffer, A. (2021). Fate of weathered multi-walled carbon nanotubes in an aquatic sediment system. Chemosphere, 277: 130319.
The widespread application of carbon nanotubes (CNT) in various consumer products leads to their inevitable release into aquatic systems and little is known about their distribution among aquatic compartments. In this study, we investigated the partitioning of radiolabeled, weathered multi-walled CNT (14C‑wMWCNT, 100 µg L‑1) in an aquatic sediment system over a period of 180 days. Over the test period, the wMWCNT disappeared exponentially from the water phase (>99.9%) and simultaneously accumulated in the sediment phase. Since the determined decay times for wMWCNT in aqueous phase were in the range of several days and only minor mineralization of 14C‑wMWCNT to 14CO2 was observed with values below 0.06% of the applied radioactivity, probably both, pelagic and benthic organisms are at risk of nanomaterial exposure.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565352100789X