LAUSR

Sustainable development of nanotechnology should comprise maximum benefits and minimum potential risks to the environment and human health. Despite quantum dots (QDs) being widely acknowledged as promising nanomaterials in various application fields, there are still knowledge gaps regarding their safe use in nanomedicine and their environmental health and safety. Given that previous investigations mostly elaborated on the direct effects of nanomaterials on cells and organs at high doses, little consideration has been taken to look into the transportation-associated toxicity upon low-dose exposure to engineered nanomaterials. In the current study, we first uncovered that CdSe QDs did not elicit significant gross toxicity in mice upon acute and chronic low-dose exposure. Further, our chronic exposure results displayed that QD particles could accumulate in the embryonic hematopoietic organ fetal liver on embryonic day 14.5 (E14.5), leading to a great reduction of hemoglobin mRNA transcription in fetal liver ...