Environmental risk assessment of disperse red 1 dye in Brazilian rivers

• Grant number: 13/50028-9
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: April 01, 2013
• End date: March 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Chemistry - Analytical Chemistry
• Agreement: CNRS
• Principal Investigator: Maria Valnice Boldrin
• Grantee: Maria Valnice Boldrin
• Principal researcher abroad: Alain Devaux
• Institution abroad: Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France
• Host Institution: Instituto de Química (IQ). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 08/10449-7 - Assessment of occurrence, toxicity/genotoxicity and degradation processes of dyes in effluents and surface water, AP.TEM

Abstract

Dyes are used in the coloration of different substrates, including paper, leather and plastics, but the most important use is on textiles. Up to 15% of the dyes used for coloring textiles might be lost into the environment. Azo dyes can be mutagenic and carcinogenic depending on their chemical structure. They can be found in river's water and sediment and in effluent discharges in the range of μ/L and in the sediment in μ/g. Also several papers reported that effluents from textile mills exhibit mutagenic activity and Japanese scientists discovered a new class of compounds, the phenylbenzotriazoles (PBTAs) derived from dyes, but not coloured that were accounting for at least 50% of the mutagenicity of Japanese rivers. Azo dyes can be toxic to aquatic organisms but although these compounds as well as their transformation products have been found in aquatic ecosystems, no mutagenicity data are available until now in aquatic organisms. Many studies have demonstrated that DNA damage measurement represents a very sensitive biomarker of exposure in aquatic species that can be studied both in vivo and in vitro using fish cell lines and recent studies have clearly demonstrated that genotoxic events in aquatic species could lead to reproduction impairment, subsequently affecting population dynamics. A recent study showed that the commercial dye Disperse Red 1 was preliminary detected in a Brazilian wastewater treatment plant effluent and this dye exhibited high toxicity especially to cladocerans and algae. The NOEC was 0,1 mg/L for both species. This commercial dye also presented mutagenic ativity in the Salmonella microsome assay. Therefore the objectives of this work were: monitor Disperse red 1 dye in Sao Paulo State aquatic ecosystems using Thin Layer Chromatograpy and HPLC MS/MS QTrap, assess its genotoxicity using both in vitro (fish cell lines) and in vivo in fish exposed to dye effluents in the field and verify the effect of photoactivation on the mutagenicity of Disperse Red 1 dye. (AU)