Pitfalls and Challenges in Nanotoxicology: A Case of Cobalt Ferrite (CoFe₂O₄) Nanocomposites

Nanotechnology is developing at a rapid pace with promises of a brilliant socio-economic future. The apprehensions of vivid future involvement with nanotechnology make nanoobjects ubiquitous in the macroscopic world of humans. Nanotechnology helps us to visualize the new mysterious horizons in engineering, sophisticated electronics, environmental remediation, biosensing, and nanomedicine. In all these hotspots, cobalt ferrite (CoFe) nanoparticles (NPs) are outstanding contestants because of their astonishing controllable physicochemical and magnetic properties with ease of synthesis methods. The extensive use of CoFe NPs may result in CoFe NPs easily penetrating the human body unintentionally by ingestion, inhalation, adsorption, etc. and intentionally being instilled into the human body during biomedical diagnostics and treatment. After being housed in the human body, it might induce oxidative stress, cytotoxicity, genotoxicity, inflammation, apoptosis, and developmental, metabolic and hormonal abnormalities. In this review, we compiled the toxicity knowledge of CoFe NPs aimed to provide the safe usage of this breed of nanomaterials.