Laser Ablation as a Versatile Tool To Mimic Polyethylene Terephthalate Nanoplastic Pollutants: Characterization and Toxicology Assessment

The presence of micro- and nanoplastics in the marine environment is raising strong concerns since they can possibly have a negative impact on human health. In particular, the lack of appropriate methodologies to collect the nanoplastics from water systems imposes the use of engineered model nanoparticles to explore their interactions with biological systems, with results not easily correlated with the real case conditions. In this work, we propose a reliable top-down approach based on laser ablation of polymers to form polyethylene terephthalate (PET) nanoplastics, which mimic real environmental nanopollutants, unlike synthetic samples obtained by colloidal chemistry. PET nanoparticles were carefully characterized in terms of chemical/physical properties and stability in different media. The nanoplastics have a ca. 100 nm average dimension, with significant size and shape heterogeneity, and they present weak acid groups on their surface, similarly to photodegraded PET plastics. Despite no toxic effects emerging by in vitro studies on human Caco-2 intestinal epithelial cells, the formed nanoplastics were largely internalized in endolysosomes, showing intracellular biopersistence and long-term stability in a simulated lysosomal environment. Interestingly, when tested on a model of intestinal epithelium, nano-PET showed high propensity to cross the gut barrier, with unpredictable long-term effects on health and potential transport of dispersed chemicals mediated by the nanopollutants.