ABSTRACT
The increased production of nanomaterials for use in drugs, cosmetics, foods, and other consumer products necessitates the need for an effective system to monitor and evaluate the potential toxic effects of these nanomaterials. Although little is known regarding the potentially harmful effects and the toxicity mechanisms of nanomaterials, one of the approaches to address this issue is by using sensors that are rapidly used to measure nanoscale properties, particularly nanotoxicity. However, there are few sensors to measure nanoscale properties and this is an area of critical interest to nanotoxicology, detection, and risk assessment, as well as for the monitoring of environmental or biological exposure. This chapter discusses emerging fields of nanotoxicity, including the challenges of characterizing nanomaterials and the potentials of combining existing analytical techniques with conventional cytotoxicity methods. Two kinds of sensors are provided, that is, chemical sensors and biosensors, that can be grouped into nanoscale sized sensors called nanosensors and macro/microscale sized sensors commonly called sensors. This review has been focused on the complex and critical issues of sensors used to evaluate nanotoxicity that could be accompanied by the creation of new methods or further developments of existing instrumentation techniques.
