Remediation of Cadmium Toxicity by Sulfidized Nano-Iron: The Importance of Organic Material

Louise M. Stevenson; Adeyemi S. Adeleye; Yiming Su; Yalei Zhang; Arturo A. Keller; Roger M. Nisbet

doi:10.1021/acsnano.7b05970

Remediation of Cadmium Toxicity by Sulfidized Nano-Iron: The Importance of Organic Material

Louise M. Stevenson, Adeyemi S. Adeleye, Yiming Su, Yalei Zhang, Arturo A. Keller, Roger M. Nisbet

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

25 Scopus citations

Abstract

Nanozerovalent iron (nZVI) is widely used for its ability to remove or degrade environmental contaminants. However, the effect of nZVI-pollutant complexes on organisms has not been tested. We demonstrate the ability of a sulfidized derivative of nZVI (FeSSi) to sorb cadmium (Cd) from aqueous media and alleviate Cd toxicity to a freshwater alga for 32 days. FeSSi particles removed over 80% of the aqueous Cd in the first hour and nearly the same concentration of free Cd remained unbound at the end of the experiment. We found that FeSSi particles with Cd sorbed onto them are an order of magnitude more toxic than FeSSi alone. Further, algal-produced organic material facilitates safer remediation of Cd by FeSSi by decreasing the toxicity of FeSSi itself. We developed a dynamic model to predict the maximum Cd concentration FeSSi can remediate without replacing Cd toxicity with its own. FeSSi can remediate four times as much Cd to phytoplankton populations when organic material is present compared to the absence of organic material. We demonstrate the effectiveness of FeSSi as an environmental remediator and the strength of our quantitative model of the mitigation of nanoparticle toxicity by algal-produced organic material.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	10558-10567
Number of pages	10
Journal	ACS Nano
Volume	11
Issue number	10
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.7b05970
State	Published - Oct 24 2017
Externally published	Yes

Funding

This research was supported by the US National Science Foundation (http://www.nsf.gov/) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (http://www.epa.gov/) under cooperative agreement number EF-0830117, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under grant 835797, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 21707103). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank the MRL Central Facilities, which are supported by the MRSEC Program of the NSF under award no. DMR 1121053, and MEIAF, supported by the NSF under awards BES-9977772, DBI-0216480, and DEB-0444712

Funders	Funder number
MEIAF	DBI-0216480, DEB-0444712, BES-9977772
US National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation	DMR 1121053
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency	EF-0830117, 835797
Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Harvard University
National Natural Science Foundation of China	21707103

Keywords

algae
ecological modeling
nanotoxicity
remediation
sulfidized nano-iron

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10.1021/acsnano.7b05970

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title = "Remediation of Cadmium Toxicity by Sulfidized Nano-Iron: The Importance of Organic Material",

abstract = "Nanozerovalent iron (nZVI) is widely used for its ability to remove or degrade environmental contaminants. However, the effect of nZVI-pollutant complexes on organisms has not been tested. We demonstrate the ability of a sulfidized derivative of nZVI (FeSSi) to sorb cadmium (Cd) from aqueous media and alleviate Cd toxicity to a freshwater alga for 32 days. FeSSi particles removed over 80% of the aqueous Cd in the first hour and nearly the same concentration of free Cd remained unbound at the end of the experiment. We found that FeSSi particles with Cd sorbed onto them are an order of magnitude more toxic than FeSSi alone. Further, algal-produced organic material facilitates safer remediation of Cd by FeSSi by decreasing the toxicity of FeSSi itself. We developed a dynamic model to predict the maximum Cd concentration FeSSi can remediate without replacing Cd toxicity with its own. FeSSi can remediate four times as much Cd to phytoplankton populations when organic material is present compared to the absence of organic material. We demonstrate the effectiveness of FeSSi as an environmental remediator and the strength of our quantitative model of the mitigation of nanoparticle toxicity by algal-produced organic material.",

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AU - Keller, Arturo A.

AU - Nisbet, Roger M.

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N2 - Nanozerovalent iron (nZVI) is widely used for its ability to remove or degrade environmental contaminants. However, the effect of nZVI-pollutant complexes on organisms has not been tested. We demonstrate the ability of a sulfidized derivative of nZVI (FeSSi) to sorb cadmium (Cd) from aqueous media and alleviate Cd toxicity to a freshwater alga for 32 days. FeSSi particles removed over 80% of the aqueous Cd in the first hour and nearly the same concentration of free Cd remained unbound at the end of the experiment. We found that FeSSi particles with Cd sorbed onto them are an order of magnitude more toxic than FeSSi alone. Further, algal-produced organic material facilitates safer remediation of Cd by FeSSi by decreasing the toxicity of FeSSi itself. We developed a dynamic model to predict the maximum Cd concentration FeSSi can remediate without replacing Cd toxicity with its own. FeSSi can remediate four times as much Cd to phytoplankton populations when organic material is present compared to the absence of organic material. We demonstrate the effectiveness of FeSSi as an environmental remediator and the strength of our quantitative model of the mitigation of nanoparticle toxicity by algal-produced organic material.

AB - Nanozerovalent iron (nZVI) is widely used for its ability to remove or degrade environmental contaminants. However, the effect of nZVI-pollutant complexes on organisms has not been tested. We demonstrate the ability of a sulfidized derivative of nZVI (FeSSi) to sorb cadmium (Cd) from aqueous media and alleviate Cd toxicity to a freshwater alga for 32 days. FeSSi particles removed over 80% of the aqueous Cd in the first hour and nearly the same concentration of free Cd remained unbound at the end of the experiment. We found that FeSSi particles with Cd sorbed onto them are an order of magnitude more toxic than FeSSi alone. Further, algal-produced organic material facilitates safer remediation of Cd by FeSSi by decreasing the toxicity of FeSSi itself. We developed a dynamic model to predict the maximum Cd concentration FeSSi can remediate without replacing Cd toxicity with its own. FeSSi can remediate four times as much Cd to phytoplankton populations when organic material is present compared to the absence of organic material. We demonstrate the effectiveness of FeSSi as an environmental remediator and the strength of our quantitative model of the mitigation of nanoparticle toxicity by algal-produced organic material.

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Remediation of Cadmium Toxicity by Sulfidized Nano-Iron: The Importance of Organic Material

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