Authors: Tina Elersek Sara Milavec Maša Korošec Polona Brezovsek Noelia Negreira Bozo Zonja Miren López de Alda Damià Barceló Ester Heath Janez Ščančar Metka Filipič
Publish Date: 2016/01/12
Volume: 23, Issue: 15, Pages: 14780-14790
Abstract
The residues of antineoplastic drugs are considered as new and emerging pollutants in aquatic environments Recent experiments showed relatively high toxicity of 5fluorouracil 5FU imatinib mesylate IM etoposide ET and cisplatin CP that are currently among most widely used antineoplastic drugs against phytoplankton species In this study we investigated the toxic potential of the mixture of 5FU + IM + ET against green alga Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata and cyanobacterium Synechococcus leopoliensis and the stability and sorption of these drugs to algal cells Toxic potential of the mixture was predicted by the concepts of ‘concentration addition’ and ‘independent action’ and compared to the experimentally determined toxicity In both test species the measured toxicity of the mixture was at effects concentrations EC10–EC50 higher than the predicted whereas at higher effect concentration EC90 it was lower In general P subcapitata was more sensitive than S leopoliensis The stability studies of the tested drugs during the experiment showed that 5FU IM and CP are relatively stable whereas in the cultures exposed to ET two transformation products with the same mass as ET but different retention time were detected The measurements of the celllinked concentrations of the tested compounds after 72 h exposure indicated that except for CP 19 of the initial concentration these drugs are not adsorbed or absorbed by algal cells The results of this study showed that in alga and cyanobacteria exposure to the mixture of 5FU + ET + IM in particular at low effect concentration range caused additive or synergistic effect on growth inhibition and they suggest that single compound toxicity data are not sufficient for the proper toxicity prediction for aquatic primary producersThis study received funding from the Seventh Framework Programme FP7/20072013 under grant agreement No 265264 CytoThreat The authors would like to thank to Mihael Bricelj Katja Kološa Karmen Stanič and Kazimir Drašlar for their assistance at the experimental work
Keywords: