The toxic effect of bisphenol AF and nanoplastic coexposure in parental and offspring generation zebrafish

Abstract

Microplastics (MPs) and bisphenol AF (BPAF) are two environmental pollutants that usually coexist in the natural environment. Studies of MPs or BPAF have gradually increased in recent years, but few studies have focused on the combination toxic effects. In this study, the subchronic model of adult zebrafish was exposed to 1 mg/L nanolevel microplastics and 200 μg/L BPAF for 45 days; the parental zebrafish were spawning every 3 days during exposure, and the effects of continuous poisoning were examined on the offspring after 1–9 spawns. The results showed that single BPAF exposure or BPAF and nanoplastic coexposure can both decrease the number of eggs laid and the locomotor behavior of parental zebrafish and impact the hatching rate, mortality, body length and locomotor behavior of offspring zebrafish, especially in 7–9 spawn. BPAF were accumulated in parental zebrafish intestinal in 334.62 ng/g in BPAF group and 594.52 ng/g in nm+BPAF group, and accumulated in whole offspring zebrafish for 281.6 ng/g in BPAF group and 321.46 ng/g in nm+BPAF group. Neurodevelopmental, inflammation, apoptosis and oxidative stress-related genes were also significantly increased after 7–9 spawn. In addition, the exacerbated accumulation in the BPAF+nm group in parental and offspring zebrafish may be the reason for the accelerated toxic effect in the present research. In this study, we investigated the combined effects of nanoplastics and BPAF on parental and offspring zebrafish in the aquatic environment to identify the accumulative toxic effects and provide new experimental support for assessing the effects of coexposure on aquatic organisms.

Keywords

• Nanoplastics
• BPAF
• Zebrafish
• Offspring
• Combination toxic effect