Safety assessment of nanoparticles in food: Current status and prospective

Safety assessments of nanoparticles (NPs) in food are essential for safeguarding supervision and maintaining public health. However, there are still no safety assessment procedures for NPs established at the national level in China and no specific toxicology and safety assessment procedures concerning NPs in food. Current methods of evaluating the safety of NPs mainly rely on traditional toxicological assessments that are extrapolated based on animal experiments from high doses to low doses and from animals to humans. This leads to uncertainties which restrict the accuracy of safety assessments for NPs, and limit the development of scientific and effective evaluation procedures and regulatory measures. This review summarizes relevant research on the application and toxicity of NPs in food as well as current administrative and regulatory issues concerning NPs in food in China and some developed countries. As such, a scientific basis is provided for the future development of evaluation procedures for NPs in food.