ABSTRACT
This chapter lays an overview of various common risk assessment procedures that are available to evaluate the toxicity of nanomaterials, limitations and challenges of conventional risk evaluation assays of nanomaterials towards microbes, and some endorsements to develop exclusive nanomaterial toxicity evaluation assays. It discusses nanomaterial toxicity in general and especially towards microbes, the risk assessment of nanomaterial toxicity towards microbes, and the associated shortcomings, future perspectives, and salient inferences. However, utilization of animal models for risk assessment of toxicity, involves various ethical clearance and regulatory issues, which has led to the emergence of in silico-based computational methods to evaluate nanomaterial toxicity. Even though risk assessment methods help to evaluate and identify the toxicity of nanomaterials, there are certain drawbacks, which hurdle the clinical translation of nanomaterials in the pharmaceutical field. In vitro studies are beneficial only to predict the cellular interactions, toxicity of nanomaterials, and their toxic mechanisms, for an initial screening of toxic nanomaterials.
