Toxicity of synthetic anti-oxidant butylated hydroxyanisole on growth and development of zebrafish Danio rerio

Abstract

Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), a synthetic antioxidant has been extensively used as a preservative in assorted products including food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, animal feeds etc. Despite being an exemplary preservative BHA has its own costs and benefits. High levels of BHA have been reported to cause severe damages at the cellular level in most fishes. On this certitude, the present study was designed to scrutinize the sublethal toxicity impacts of BHA at the molecular level in both the embryos as well as juvenile species of Zebrafish. The acute exposure studies were carried out by exposing the embryos and juveniles to a series of BHA concentration (1, 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 µM) along with a control. After the acute exposure hatching rate was analyzed along with survival and deformities. The survived individuals were subjected to length analysis to understand the impacts on morphometric characters. The results revealed severe eye, spinal cord and yolk sac deformities in the embryos. 50 and 100 µM BHA revealed very low viability and increased heart rate (≈168bpm at 25µM).