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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Toxicol.
Sec. Environmental Toxicology
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/ftox.2024.1399467
This article is part of the Research Topic Model Organisms in Toxicology View all 4 articles

A Systematic Review of the Toxic Potential of Parabens in Fish

Provisionally accepted
Asok K. Dasmahapatra Asok K. Dasmahapatra 1Joydeep Chatterjee Joydeep Chatterjee 2*Paul B. Tchounwou Paul B. Tchounwou 3*
  • 1 University of Mississippi, Oxford, United States
  • 2 University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Virginia, United States
  • 3 Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Parabens are the most prevalent ingredients in cosmetics and personnel care products (PCPs). They are colorless and tasteless, and also have good stability with other components. Because of their unique physicochemical properties, they are extensively used as antimicrobial and antifungal agents. Their release into the aquatic ecosystem poses potential threats to aquatic organisms including fish. We conducted an electronic search in PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed) using the search term parabens and fish, and sorted 93 articles consisting of methyl- (MTP), ethyl- (ETP), propyl- (PPP), butyl- (BTP), and benzyl-parabens (BNP) in several fish species. Further, we confined our search to six fish species (common carp, Cyprinus carpio; fathead minnows, Pimephales promelas; Japanese medaka, Oryzias latipes; rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss; Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus; and zebrafish, Danio rerio) and four parabens (MTP, ETP, PPP, BTP) and sorted 48 articles for review. Our search indicates that among all six fish, zebrafish was the most studied fish and MTP was the most tested paraben in fish. Moreover, depending on the alkyl chain length and linearity, long-chained parabens were more toxic than the ones with short chain. Parabens can be considered as endocrine disruptors (EDs), targeting estrogen-androgen-thyroid-steroidogenesis (EATS) pathways, blocking the development and growth of gametes and causing intergenerational toxicity to impact the viability of offspring/larvae. Paraben exposure can also induce behavioral changes and nervous system disorders in fish. Although USEPA and EU limit the use of parabens in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, their prolonged persistence in the environment can put an additional health risk to humans.

    Keywords: Parabens, fish, Oxidative Stress, Endocrine Disruptors, Behavior, Neuromodulator

    Received: 12 Mar 2024; Accepted: 19 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Dasmahapatra, Chatterjee and Tchounwou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Joydeep Chatterjee, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, 76019, Virginia, United States
    Paul B. Tchounwou, Morgan State University, Baltimore, 21251, Maryland, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.