Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are added to numerous consumer products to enhance their effectiveness, whether it be for environmental remediation, mechanical properties, or as dietary supplements. Uses of ENMs include adding to enhance products, carbon for strength or dielectric properties, silver for antimicrobial properties, zinc oxide for UV sun-blocking properties, titanium dioxide for photocatalysis, or silica for desiccant properties. However, concerns arise from ENM functional properties that can impact the environment and a lack of regulation regarding ENMs leads to potential public exposure to ENMs and results in ill-informed public or manufacturer perceptions of ENMs. My dissertation evaluates the environmental, human health, and societal impacts of using ENMs, with a focus on ionic silver and nanosilver, in consumer and industrial products. Reproducible experiments served as functional assays to assess ENM distributions among various environmental matrices. Functional assay results were visualized using radar plots and aid in a framework to estimate likely ENM disposition in the environment. To assess beneficial uses of ENMs, bromide ion removal from drinking waters to limit disinfection by-product formation was studied. Silver-enabled graphene oxide materials were capable of removing bromide from water, and exhibited less competition from background solutes (e.g. natural organic matter) when compared against solely ionic silver addition to water for bromide removal. To assess complex interactions of ENMs with the microbiome, batch experiments were performed using fecal samples spiked with ionic silver or commercial dietary silver nanoparticles. Dietary nanosilver and ionic silver exposures to the fecal microbiome for 24 hours reduce short chain fatty acid (SCFA) production and changes the relative abundance of the microbiota. To understand the social perceptions of ENMS, statistically rigorous surveys were conducted to assess related perceptions related to the use of ENMs in drinking water treatment devices the general public and, separately, industrial manufacturers. These stakeholders are influenced by costs and efficiency of the technologies, consumer concerns of the safety of technologies, and environmental health and safety of the technologies. This dissertation represents novel research that took an interdisciplinary approach, spanning from wet-lab engineering bench scale testing to social science survey assessments to better understand the environmental, human health, and societal impacts of using ENMs such as nanosilver and ionic silver in industrial processes and consumer products.

Conventional functional assays (FAs), which are used to describe the behaviors and assess the impacts of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs), have extensive human factor related errors (i.e. extraction process errors due to human laboratory skills), and consume considerable amounts of laboratory material. Consequently, there is a need and opportunity to improve conventional FAs by minimizing the potential for human factor related errors, reducing the usage of ENMs and reagents, and increase experimental reproducibility. The goal of this study was to simplify the conventional FAs and evaluate the feasibility and reproducibility of the simplified FAs. The underlying hypothesis implies that simplified FAs could quickly quantify the partitioning of nanoparticles between immiscible phases with minimum human factor related errors, low usage of ENMs, and high experimental reproducibility. Three different FAs were studied for this project: octanol-water assay, distribution to sediment assay, and cloud point extraction (CPE) assay. Three widely applied ENMs were selected: silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) coated with citrate, magnetite nanoparticles (Fe3O4) capped with polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP), and multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTS) dispersed in an organic solution. Removal efficiency was the selected parameter used to describe the distribution of ENMs. Based on the variability and the t-tests on the removal efficiencies of conventional and simplified FAs, it is conclusive that the conventional octanol-water FAs on Fe3O4, the sediment FAs on Fe3O4, and the CPE FAs on MWCNTs and Fe3O4 can be simplified. The conventional octanol-water on AgNPs and the sediment FAs on AgNPs and MWCNTs cannot be simplified. It is inconclusive that the conventional octanol-water FAs on MWCNTs and the CPE FAs on AgNPs can be simplified, due to the uncertain causes and consistency of the differences on the removal efficiencies.