Modeling Approaches for
Characterizing and Evaluating
Environmental Exposure to Engineered Nanomaterials in Support of Risk-Based
Decision Making
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Abstract
As the use of engineered nanomaterials becomes more prevalent,
the likelihood of unintended exposure to these materials also increases.
Given the current scarcity of experimental data regarding fate, transport,
and bioavailability, determining potential environmental exposure
to these materials requires an in depth analysis of modeling techniques
that can be used in both the near- and long-term. Here, we provide
a critical review of traditional and emerging exposure modeling approaches
to highlight the challenges that scientists and decision-makers face
when developing environmental exposure and risk assessments for nanomaterials.
We find that accounting for nanospecific properties, overcoming data
gaps, realizing model limitations, and handling uncertainty are key
to developing informative and reliable environmental exposure and
risk assessments for engineered nanomaterials. We find methods suited
to recognizing and addressing significant uncertainty to be most appropriate
for near-term environmental exposure modeling, given the current state
of information and the current insufficiency of established deterministic
models to address environmental exposure to engineered nanomaterials