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Quantum dots (QDs) confer a wide range of optical properties to pigments/inks. With new products and applications entering the market, the airborne emissions of QDs-incorporating inks during usage stage at consumer scale (e.g. household printing) and their corresponding impacts towards human health and the environment need to be investigated. In the present work Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) QDs have been selected as a case study. The targets of this study comprise: (i) the characterization under controlled conditions of the emissions during inkjet printing of a prototype of a CdTe QDs nanoadditivated ink and (ii) the assessment of the feasibility to derive human health and freshwater effect factors (EF) for potentially released CdTe QDs with the USEtox® consensus model. Mean particle size after 60 minutes inkjet printing corresponded to 59.52 nm. For human health EF calculation an extrapolation to the human EF of other nanomaterials has been proposed considering CdTe QDs’ specific surface area whereas for the calculation of the freshwater EF, few of the data available have revealed suitable. A generic constraint to calculate both EFs for CdTe QDs released throughout the life cycle of a product incorporating them is related to the absence of information corresponding to their specific (eco)toxicological impacts.

Even if it has been claimed that Life Cycle Assessment is an essential tool to analyze, evaluate, understand and manage the environmental and health impacts of nanotechnology, few studies incorporate characterization factors (CFs) for human toxicity and freshwater ecotoxicity accounting for the impacts of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) beyond their manufacturing stage. The objective of the present work consisted in identifying the correspondence between the information required and outputs provided by the USEtox® consensus model (which is not nanospecific) and the SimpleBox4Nano model (which accounts for nanospecific processes, e.g. aggregation, attachment and dissolution for Fate Factor derivatization) in order to assess the possibility of integrating the two to derive size-dependent CFs for the varying sizes of ENMs throughout their life cycle. The possibility to combine and integrate the two models appeared to be limited since there is no absolute correspondence between the two of them.