Greenness of analytical methods for the study of metal-containing nanoparticles in biomedical samples, personal care products and food

Nanotechnology is still an emerging field and applications of metal-containing nanoparticles (MNPs) in consumer products are widespread. Therefore, analytical methods are required for MNP analysis in food and personal care products as well as in biomedical samples. However, no standard methods have been established and a broad variety of analytical methods has been proposed in the literature. In addition to the analytical performance of these methods, greenness will play an important role in providing standard methods suitable for the monitoring of MNPs. This review evaluates the greenness of methods for MNP analysis in the above matrices published in peer-reviewed journals within the last 10 years. The greenness metrics AGREE and AGREEprep were applied to a selection of 30 individual methods and analytical performance of 10 selected methods is discussed in relation to greenness, revealing no correlation between size detection limits and AGREE scores.