Environmental leaching of nanoparticles from a consumer product and their detection by single particle ICPMS

The increased use of products containing nanoparticles will inevitably lead to their release into environment. Currently, the most commonly used nanoparticles in consumer products are metal oxide nanoparticles. Single particle ICPMS (spICPMS) has already showed a great potential for tracing silver nanoparticles in the aquatic environment, and it is the most promising technique for routine analysis of metallic nanoparticles in environmentally relevant concentration levels (ng/L).The biggest challenge in spICPMS analysis is to achieve the lowest particle size detection limit which is directly related to the detection limit, what puts high demands on the ICPMS instrumentation. In our study the triple quadrupole ICP-MS in single particle mode is employed to trace potential release of iron oxide nanoparticles from a consumer product into the simulated aquatic environment.