Risk Management, Regulatory Aspects, Environmental Challenges, and Future Perspectives of Functionalized Carbon Nanostructures

Carbon is one of the most abundant materials, and is very attractive for many applications because it exists in many forms based on dimensions. Carbon nanostructures have unique physical, chemical, and electrical properties, which have attracted great interest from scientists. Graphene and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are considered among the best electrochemically stable conductive matrices. The production and manufacturing of CNT-incorporated products can lead to the potential environmental release of CNTs. Nanoparticles can cause oxidative stress, DNA damage, and cytokine inductions among organisms. On waste disposal, owing to the degradation of these particles, heavy metals are released into the soil, which contaminates the soil and water and even accumulates in the food chain. It must be noted that to effectively evaluate workers and exposures, and to minimize risks for respiratory hazards, a multi-tiered strategy and feasible interventions are needed. These structures directly perturb the cells’ ability to sense and respond to external forces, influencing cell fate, and enabling new mechanistic studies. Through careful design of their nanoscale structure, these systems act as biological metamaterials, eliciting unusual biological response properties and contributing considerably to their toxicological profile in biological systems, also making CNTs very attractive in the medical field, where they can be used as carriers of bioactive molecules, contrast agents, biological platforms, and for many other applications. Plasma membranes are highly dynamic structures, with key molecular interactions underlining their functional occurrence on the nanometer scale. A fundamental challenge in biology is to absorb these interactions into living cells. Regulatory frameworks and guidelines such as regulatory considerations for functionalized carbon nanostructures, safety assessments, and labeling requirements; environmental impact and sustainability such as the environmental fate and the transport of functionalized carbon nanostructures, ecotoxicity, and potential risks to ecosystems; and future perspectives and emerging trends of carbon nanostructures are discussed in the current chapter.