Evaluation of Fish Early LifeStage Toxicity Models of Chronic Embryonic Exposures to Complex Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Mixtures

• Main Authors: Mace G. Barron, Mark G. Carls, Ron Heintz, Stanley D. Rice
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: Pacific; Pink salmon
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.587.1054; http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/78/1/60.full.pdf

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) can cause a variety of effects in early life-stages of fish that have been chronically ex-posed as embryos, including mortality, deformities, and edemas. Mechanistic models of the chronic toxicity of complex mixtures of PAHs in fish have not been reported, with the exception of a previously untested model based on the lipids of fish as the site of action and toxicity caused through a narcosis mechanism. Four mechanism-based models of the chronic toxicity of embryonic exposures to complex mixtures of petrogenic PAHs in two species of fish, Pacific herring and pink salmon, were evaluated using a toxic-units approach: narcosis, aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) agonism, alkyl phenanthrene toxicity, and combined toxicity. Al-kyl phenanthrenes were the predominant PAH constituent deter-mining early life-stage toxicity in both herring and salmon. The alkyl phenanthrene model had 67 to 80 % accuracy in predicting