Environmental hazard assessment for polymeric and inorganic nanobiomaterials used in drug delivery.

Compared with other common pollutants, even the most sensitive of the selected nanobiomaterials, chitosan, is less toxic than engineered nanomaterials such as nano-ZnO and nano-Ag, some common antibiotics, heavy metals or organic pollutants such as triclosan. Given the current knowledge, the nanobiomaterials covered in this work therefore pose only little or no environmental hazard.