Abstract
Pharmaceuticals and Personal care products (PPCPs) are frequently released into several marine matrices, representing significant environmental and ecotoxicological risks. Among the widest spread PPCPs in aquatic systems is Salicylic acid (SA), with known negative effects on marine and freshwater species. Nevertheless, the toxicity resulting from these emerging pollutants, including SA, together with climate change has still received little attention up to date. Among climate change related factors salinity is one that most affects aquatic organisms. To better understand the combined impacts of SA and salinity, the present study evaluated the biochemical alterations induced in Mytilus galloprovincialis mussels exposed to SA and different salinity levels, acting individually and in combination. The effects observed clearly highlighted that cellular damages were mainly observed at higher salinity (35), with no additive or synergistic effects derived from the combined presence of SA. Higher antioxidant capacity of mussels in the presence of SA may prevent increased LPO levels in comparison to uncontaminated mussels. Nevertheless, in the presence of SA mussels revealed loss of redox balance, regardless of the salinity level. Furthermore, mussels exposed to SA at control salinity showed increased metabolic capacity which decreased when exposed to salinities 25 and 35. These findings may indicate the protective capacity of mussels towards higher stressful conditions, with lower energy reserves expenditure when in the presence of SA and salinities out of their optimal range. Although limited cellular damages were observed, changes on mussel's redox balance, antioxidant mechanisms and metabolism derived from the combined exposure to SA and salinity changes may compromise mussel's growth and reproduction. Overall, the present study highlights the need to investigate the impacts induced by pollutants under present and future climate change scenarios, towards a more realistic environmental risk assessment.
Highlights
Coastal systems are increasingly exposed to a huge diversity of pollutants, resulting from population growing around these areas, newly developed technologies and processes that generate higher amount of unknown wastes, and due to generalized and easier access to a diversity of materials and substances
Journal Pre-proof tested were: i) when in the absence of Salicylic acid (SA), different salinity levels had no effects on mussels; significant effects among salinity levels were represented in figures with lower case letters; ii) when in the presence of SA, different salinity levels had no effects on mussels; significant differences among salinity levels were represented in figures with upper case letters; iii) for each salinity level, SA had no effects on mussels; for each salinity level, significant differences between mussels with and without SA were represented with an asterisk
Overall, the present findings highlight the impacts of increased salinity levels in mussels oxidative status, with higher injuries under salinity 35 compared to salinity 25 and control (30)
Summary
Coastal systems are increasingly exposed to a huge diversity of pollutants, resulting from population growing around these areas, newly developed technologies and processes that generate higher amount of unknown wastes, and due to generalized and easier access to a diversity of materials and substances. The increasing knowledge on the wide occurrence of SA in diverse aquatic environments worldwide distributed has rose concerns on possible toxic impacts towards non-target species inhabiting these aquatic systems In this regard, still scarce information is available on the toxic effects of SA towards aquatic organisms, especially marine invertebrates, with recent studies showing oxidative stress impacts in freshwater species, namely in Lemna minor plants (Alkimin et al, 2019), the crustacean Daphnia magna (Gómez-Oliván et al 2014) and the fish Salmo trutta (Nunes et al 2015), and in marine and estuarine species such as fish Mugil cephalus (Fazio et al, 2013), mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis, Freitas et al, 2019) and polychaetes (Nereis diversicolor, Nunes, 2019). Studies conducted by Freitas et al (2019a) further demonstrated that the exposure to SA can cause increase of metabolic capacity in M. galloprovincialis after exposure to an increasing gradient of SA concentrations
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