Nanoclays in food products: benefits and possible risks (literature review)

Nanoclays (NC) are aluminosilicates that consist of layers (nano-plates) being 1-2 nanometers thick and having a diameter over 1 µm, nanotubes, and nano-disks. Due to such structure and their ion-exchange and sorption properties as well as gas permeability NC are widely used in industries, agriculture, and medicine. Gas-barrier composite packages are made from hydrophobic NC modified with cation-active surface-active substances. A person can be orally exposed to NC due to their migration from packages into food products and drinks, when NC are applied in medicine as enteric sorbents and anti-bacterial preparations, they can be introduced with food additives and residual quantities of technological auxiliaries as well as in case when food products and agricultural raw materials are accidentally contaminated with clays. Multiple research works dwell on experiments with NC performed with model systems in vitro when NC turned out to be cytotoxic for various cell types, and it was more apparent for hydrophobic NC than for their non-modified analogues...