Occurrence and Environmental Distribution of 5 UV Filters During the Summer Season in Different Water Bodies

Abstract

Organic UV filters are used worldwide in various personal care products as well as textiles, paints, plastic, food and adhesives. They are main ingredients in sunscreen lotions that are used heavily by beachgoers in the summer season.There is thus an increasing concern regarding the fate of organic UV filters in the environment and their impact on living organisms. Many of the UV filters in use are hydrophobic and are expected to accumulate in the sediment phase in aquatic systems, but this has yet to be validated in situ. We targeted the UV filters benzophenone 3 (BP3), butyl Methoxydibenzoylmethane (BMDBM), diethylhexyl butamido triazone (DBT), bis-ethylhexyloxyphenol methoxyphenyl triazine (BEMT) and methylene bis-benzotriazolyl tetramethylbutylphenol (MBBT) in a freshwater lake and in a coastal bay in order to understand their distribution during summer 2016. Further, we examined their environmental partitioning by collecting samples from the surface water, the sediment phase and water surface microlayer (SML). We show for the first time the presence of DBT, BEMT and MBBT in environmental matrices (water, SML, and sediment). Notably, these UV filters were detected at low amounts in surface waters with maximum concentrations of 9.9 ng/L for DBT, 18.4 ng/L for BEMT and below detection limits for MBBT, and somewhat higher concentrations in the SML, with maximum concentrations of 43.3 ng/L for DBT, 5625.4 ng/L for BEMT and 45.6 ng/L for MBBT. These filters were detected at even greater concentrations in the sediments, with maximum concentrations of 652.6 ng/g for DBT, 115.0 ng/g for BEMT and 75.2 ng/g for MBBT (dry weight sediment). We also performed controlled laboratory experiments to determine their partitioning behavior and we verified the actual solubility of many of the filters. This will help in determining the environmental fate and finally lead to a better risk assessment of these compounds. Together, these results corroborate the hypothesis that hydrophobic UV filters accumulate in the sediment phase and highlight the importance of discerning whether these UV filters impact the benthic community and their potential for bioaccumulation.

Effect of 10 UV Filters on the Brine Shrimp Artemia salina and the Marine Microalga Tetraselmis sp.

“…Cells cultured in the presence of BM have experienced a significant increase in cell volume and granularity at 1 mg/L (p < 0.05). This concentration is 1000 to 10,000 times higher than the few concentrations reported in the field [3,5,34]. According to environmental concentrations of other UV filters, one can assume that the effective concentration of 1 mg/L is probably higher than any BM environmental concentration, but this remains to be confirmed.…”

“…Our results indicate that among the different UV filters tested in this study, OC was the most toxic molecule showing the lowest LC 50 concentration (0.6 mg/L), followed by BM and HS (1.8 mg/L and 2.4 mg/L, respectively). Environmental HS and BM concentrations reported so far are at least 500 times lower than LC 50 , with values lower than 3 µg/L [3,5,34,35]. OC concentrations in coastal waters are higher and have been detected up to 9 µg/L [5,35,36].…”

Toxicity of UV filters on marine bacteria: Combined effects with damaging solar radiation

“…UV filters are of emerging concern due to their large production volumes, the increasing coastal tourism, their persistence related to their chemical properties, and their toxicity (Raineri et al, 2017). Previous studies reported the occurrence of UV filters ranging from nano to microgram per liter in different biotopes (rivers (Kameda et al, 2011;Fent et al, 2010), lakes (Balmer et al, 2005;Fagervold et al, 2019;Langford et al, 2015), coastal waters (Fagervold et al, 2019;Tovar-Sánchez et al, 2013;Apel et al, 2018;Sánchez Rodríguez et al, 2015;Tsui et al, 2019;Sankoda et al, 2015) and sediments (Kameda et al, 2011;Fagervold et al, 2019;Mitchelmore et al, 2019)) but also demonstrated their bioaccumulation and toxic effects on several aquatic organisms (algae (Mao et al, 2018;Seoane et al, 2017), coral (Mitchelmore et al, 2019;He et al, 2019;Tsui et al, 2017), benthic mollusks (Giraldo, 2017), fishes (Araújo et al, 2018), dolphin (Alonso et al, 2015;Gago-Ferrero et al, 2013)), considering a wide variety of toxicological endpoints. Organic UV filters showed variable photostability.…”

Shedding Light on the Bacterial Resistance to Toxic UV Filters: A Comparative Genomic Study

“…HtrA protease/chaperone protein was shown to be involved in high temperature and oxidative stress tolerance in Campylobacter jejuni 2 . Mutation induced lack of glutathione-glutaredoxin in a Rhodobacter strain resulted in decreased growth rates and high sensitivity to oxidative stress 42 .…”