Behavioral Toxicolgy Of Organophosphorus Flame Retardants On The Model Fish

With the gradual ban on brominated flame retardants,the application of organophosphate flame retardants(OPFRs)has increased,which makes it a new environmental contaminant.OPFRs are extensively distributed into all kinds of environmental media.In recent years,the effects of OPFRs on public health and wildlife have become a hot area of research.Since OPFRs are similar to OPs in structure,it is supposed that OPFRs may pose neurotoxic risk on the central nervous system.Therefore,we chose three OPFRs,namely TPP,TBP and TBEP,and employed zebrafish and Japanese medaka fish as experimental animals,to investigate the developmental toxicity on embryo of OPFRs.Then,the effects of OPFRs on free swimming behavior of the two model fish were studied.Moreover,in order to preliminarily explore the mechanism of neurotoxicity,the transcriptional responses of neural development genes,as well as the activity of enzyme related to movement behavior,were determined.The results showed that OPFRs exposure delayed the time to hatching,inhibited the hatching rate,and decreased the heart rate and body length.It was also found that significant increases on the gross abnormalities rate on the embryos of zebrafish and medaka after OPFRs exposure.Additionally,OPFRs exposure resulted in the changes of swimming behaviors of larvae.Furthermore,it showed that the activity of AChE enzyme and its gene transcription were affected in fish exposed to OPFRs.The transcriptional responses of genes related to the neural development were changed after OPFRs exposure.In summary,our results demonstrated that OPFRs might have neurotoxic effects on model fish,which will be helpful in the ecotoxicity risk assessment for OPFRs.