Release of TiO2 from paints containing pigment-TiO2 or nano-TiO2 by weathering

Abstract

The release of nanomaterials from products and applications that are used by industry and consumers has only been studied to a very limited extent. The amount and the characteristics of the released particles determine the potential environmental exposure. In this work we investigated the release of Ti from paints containing pigment-TiO₂ and nano-TiO₂. Panels covered with paint with and without nano-TiO₂ were exposed to simulated weathering by sunlight and rain in climate chambers. The same paints were also studied in small-scale leaching tests to elucidate the influence of various parameters on the release such as composition of water, type of support and UV-light. Under all conditions we only observed a very low release close to background values, less than 1.5 μg l⁻¹ in the climate chamber over 113 irrigations per drying cycle and between 0.5 and 14 μg l⁻¹ in the leaching tests, with the highest concentrations observed after prolonged UV-exposure. The actual release of Ti over the 113 weathering cycles was only 0.007% of the total Ti, indicating that TiO₂ was strongly bound in the paint. Extraction of UV-exposed and then milled paint resulted in about 100-times larger release of Ti from the nano-TiO₂ containing paint whereas the paint with only pigment-TiO₂ did not show this increase. This indicated that the release of Ti from the paints is an effect of the addition of nano-TiO₂, either by photocatalytic degradation of the organic paint matrix (observed by electron microscopic imaging of the paint surface) or by direct release of nano-TiO₂. Our work suggests that paints containing nano-TiO₂ may release only very limited amounts of materials into the environment, at least over the time-scales investigated in this work.