Soil properties can evoke toxicity of copper oxide nanoparticles towards springtails at low concentrations

Copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO-NP) are used as an efficient alternative to conventional Cu in agriculture and might end up soils. They show a high toxicity towards cells microorganisms, but only low soil invertebrates. However, most existing ecotoxicological studies were conducted sandy reference at test concentrations ?100 mg Cu/kg soil. Therefore, there is knowledge gap concerning the effect of texture on CuO-NP lower, more realistic concentrations. In our study, three loamy soils spiked with four concentrations, ranging from 5 158 Cu/kg. We investigated 28-day reproduction well weight content after 14-day bioaccumulation subsequent elimination for springtail Folsomia candida. For first time we analysed size distribution aqueous extracts by single particle-ICP-MS which revealed that diameter significantly increased increasing concentration, did not vary between Negative effects observed soils, pronounced loamy-acidic (?61%), they always strongest lowest concentration. The much stronger than reported other performed higher same moderate impact growth (?28%) was observed, while springtails inhibited. Rather body taken up, NP-clay interactions play crucial role regarding their toxicity. Our study reports toxic invertebrate low, concentration range. results strongly suggest including lower range types nanotoxicity testing.