Toxic effects of methylparaben on sea urchin (Arbacia lixula)

Methylparaben is widely used in industries like paint, paper and especially cosmetic, food and drug. Due to the presence in products as preservatives, which are widely used in daily life, methylparaben have been introduced to the aquatic ecosystems after usage and excretion just like all other chemicals. In 1996, the first study was published reporting methylparaben had been detected in water samples taken from aquatic environment and since then, it has been revealed that methylparaben is present in almost all of the samples collected from rivers, lakes, sea, influent and effluent waters of waste water treatment plants, in range of ng/l-µg/l. Although it is a fairly water soluble chemical, methylparaben is ubiquitous in aquatic ecosystems due to the continuous usage. Parabens are also classified as endocrine disruptor chemicals and methylparaben is reported to be the most common paraben type found in the environment. In this study, genotoxic, spermiotoxic and embrytoxic effects of methylparaben in different concentrations were studied by the bioassays using sea urchin Arbacia lixula as the test organism, to determine the effects in the early life stages when the organisms show the highest sensitivity to the environmental stresses. Since the A. lixula eggs are dark-coloured, the method used in genotoxicity were modified and developed to decolorize the eggs, therefore the mitotic aberrations could be determined. The results of the bioassays show that A. lixula embryos were not able to make it to the larval stage in concentrations of 8 ppm and above of methylparaben and number of mitotic aberrations tended to increase depending on methylparaben concentrations.