A systematic Review of the Toxic Potentials of Parabens in Fish

The antimicrobial, and yeast inhibitory activities, and the unique physicochemical properties, such as absence of color, odor, taste and good stability with other components, parabens are the most prevalent ingredients in cosmetics and personnel care products (PCPs). Due to their extensive use, parabens have contaminated several environmental matrices, including aquatic environments, and induced potential threats to aquatic lives, 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 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 indicated that among all six fish, zebrafish is the most studied fish and MTP is the most studied paraben in fish. Moreover, depending on the alkyl chain length and linearity, long-chained parabens were more toxic than short-chained parabens. Parabens can be considered as endocrine disruptors (EDs), targeting estrogen-androgen-thyroid-steroidogenesis (EATS) pathways. Parabens can transmit to the next generations and disrupt embryonic development in fish. The behavioral patterns and the nervous system disorders were also induced in fish by paraben exposure. 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.