Authors: Paula SuaresRocha Thomas Braunbeck Dejanira de Francheschi de Angelis Maria Aparecida MarinMorales
Publish Date: 2015/04/25
Volume: 22, Issue: 16, Pages: 12566-12575
Abstract
Oil refinery effluents contain many chemicals at variable concentrations Therefore it is difficult to predict potential effects on the environment The Atibaia River SP Brazil which serves as a source of water supply for many municipalities receives the effluents of one of the biggest oil refinery of this country The aim of this study was to identify the ecotoxicity of fresh water sediments under the influence of this oil refinery through neutral red cytotoxicity and ethoxyresorufinOdeethylase EROD assays AhRmediated toxicity in RTLW1 cells derived from fish liver Once the refinery captures the waters of Jaguarí River for the development of its activities and discharges its effluents after treatment into the Atibaia River which then flows into Piracicaba River sediments from both river systems were also investigated The samples showed a high cytotoxic potential even when compared to wellknown pollution sites However the cytotoxicity of samples collected downstream the effluent was not higher than that of sediments collected upstream which suggested that the refinery discharges are not the main source of pollution in those areas No EROD activity could be recorded which could be confirmed by chemical analyses of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAHs that revealed a high concentration of phenanthrene anthracene fluoranthene and pyrene which are not EROD inducers in RTLW1 cells In contrast high concentrations of PAHs were found upstream the refinery effluent corroborating cytotoxicity results from the neutral red assay A decrease of PAHs was recorded from upstream to downstream the refinery effluent probably due to dilution of compounds following water discharges On the other hand these discharges apparently contribute specifically to the amount of anthracene in the river since an increase of anthracene concentrations could be recorded downstream the effluent Since the extrapolation of results from acute toxicity to specific toxic effects with different modes of action is a complex task complementary bioassays covering additional specific effects should be applied in future studies for better understanding of the overall ecotoxicity of those environmentsThe authors would like to thank the following Dr Niels C Bols Dr Lucy Lee University of Waterloo Canada and Dr Henner Hollert Dr Steffen Keiter Aachen University Germany for providing the permanent cell line RTLW1 Dr George Luiz Luvizotto University of São Paulo State—UNESP Brazil for his active help in collecting the samples and Ana Maria S Rocha for the language review The personal post doc grant to the first author by the Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo FAPESP process n 2010/118200 is gratefully acknowledged
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