Assessment of acute toxicity (LC50-96 h) of aluminium oxide, silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide nanoparticles on the freshwater fish, Oreochromis mossambicus (Peters, 1852)

Abstract

The acute toxicity of three nanoparticles, such as aluminium oxide (Al2O3-NPs), silicon dioxide (SiO2-NPs) and titanium dioxide (TiO2-NPs), were assessed on the freshwater fish, Oreochromis mossambicus for 96 h. Nanoparticles with different sizes as 16.7 nm of Al2O3, 1 nm of SiO2 and 11.4 nm of TiO2 were evaluated for the median lethal concentration by probit analysis. Different concentrations of nanoparticles of Al2O3-NPs at 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 mg/ L; SiO2-NPs at 5, 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150 and 175 mg/ L; and TiO2-NPs at 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 175, 200 and 225 mg/ L were exposed to fishes for 96 h maintaining 10 animals per group. Mortality of fish was observed and recorded throughout the experiment. Median lethal concentrations that was determined by probit analysis is found to be 40 mg/L for Al2O3-NPs, 120 mg/L for SiO2-NPs and 164 mg/L for TiO2-NPs. The results proved that nanoparticles showed acute toxicity to fish when exposed for 96 h and this could reveal the fact that exposure of nanoparticles may result in adverse toxic effects to fish that eventually affects the health status of aquatic ecosystem.