A Relative Study of Acute Cardiac Effects on Daphnia magna and Chemical Properties of Endocrine Disruptors

Abstract

Modern humans are exposed to many types of artificial chemicals without realizing it. Environmental hormones are chemicals in the environment that surround humans, which enter the human body through various routes in our daily lives. The route can be bioaccumulation in the natural food chain and ingestion after being left behind in plastic products or water treatment. Chemicals that disturb the endocrine system by binding to hormone receptors and mimicking the function of hormones in the body are collectively known as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). So, knowing their effects, even from Daphnia, can be essential. In this study, a 30-minute exposure experiment was conducted to measure the heartbeat change of Daphnia to the serially diluted pesticide solutions and quantify the magnitude of heartbeat changes. The acute cardiac disturbance index (CDI) and the leading constant of polynomial regression analysis were compared to various chemical properties, such as XlogP3, hydrogen donor and acceptor number, topical PSA, heavy atom, and complexity.
 The results showed that most BPM% changes displayed polynomial profiles for the relative concentration. Among the chemical properties, molecular weight and heavy atom number showed relatively moderate relationships with acute CDIs and leading coefficients, R2 up to 0.345, but all other properties were poorly correlated. The study might demonstrate the feasibility of further examining parameters with more significant relationships for underlying mechanisms.