Issue 12, 2010

Ecotoxicological assessment of lanthanum with Caenorhabditis elegans in liquid medium

Abstract

With their widespread applications in industry, agriculture and many other fields, more and more rare earth elements (REEs) are getting into the environment, especially the aquatic systems. Therefore, understanding the aquatic ecotoxicity of REEs has become more and more important. In the present work, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) was used as a test organism and life-cycle endpoints were chosen along with elemental assay to evaluate the aquatic toxicity of lanthanum (La), a representative of REEs. The results show La3+ had significant adverse effects on the growth and reproduction of worms above a concentration of 10 μmol L−1. The elemental mapping by microbeam synchrotron radiation X-ray fluorescence (μ-SRXRF) illustrated how La treatment disturbed the metals distribution in the whole body of a single tiny nematode at lower levels. Our results suggested that the high-level REEs in some polluted water bodies would lead to an aquatic ecological crisis. The assessment we performed in the present work could be developed as a standardized test design for aquatic toxicological research.

Graphical abstract: Ecotoxicological assessment of lanthanum with Caenorhabditis elegans in liquid medium

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
28 Jun 2010
Accepted
14 Oct 2010
First published
03 Nov 2010

Metallomics, 2010,2, 806-810

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