Toxicity assessment and bioaccumulation in zebrafish embryos exposed to carbon nanotubes suspended in Pluronic® F-108

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are often suspended in Pluronic® surfactants by sonication, which may confound toxicity studies because sonication of surfactants can create degradation products that are toxic to mammalian cells. Here, we present a toxicity assessment of Pluronic® F-108 with and without suspended CNTs using embryonic zebrafish as an in vivo model. Pluronic® sonolytic degradation products were toxic to zebrafish embryos just as they were to mammalian cells. When the toxic Pluronic® fragments were removed, there was little effect of pristine multi-walled CNTs (pMWNTs), carboxylated MWNTs (cMWNTs) or pristine single-walled carbon nanotubes (pSWNTs) on embryo viability and development, even at high concentrations. A gel electrophoretic method coupled with Raman imaging was developed to measure the bioaccumulation of CNTs by zebrafish embryos, and dose-dependent uptake of CNTs was observed. These data indicate that embryos accumulate pMWNTs, cMWNTs and pSWNTs yet there is very little embryo toxicity.

• Environmental toxicology
• ecotoxicology
• nanotoxicology
• nanotubes
• toxicology

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the core facility at the Sinnhuber Aquatic Research Laboratory (Corvallis, OR) for supplying the zebrafish embryos (National Institute for Environmental Health and Sciences, Grant P30-ES000210).

Declaration of interest

The authors thank the University of Arizona/Semiconductor Research Corporation Engineering Research Center for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing (Grant ERC425-048; R.D., P.P., R.W.), the National Cancer Institute (Grant R15-CA152917; R.D., P.P.), the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (Grant R15-ES023666; P.P., R.D.), and National Institute of Health grants ES017552-01A2 (S.H.), ES016896-01 (S.H.), P30 ES000210 (S.H.), and AFRL FA8650-05-1-5041 (S.H.) for supporting this work. The authors are also grateful to the Undergraduate Research Fund of the University of Texas at Dallas School of Natural Sciences & Mathematics for support of undergraduate students.

Supplementary material available online

Supplementary Figure S1, S2, S3 and S4; Table S1.