Toxicity of HC Orange No. 1 to Daphnia magna, zebrafish (Brachydanio rerio) embryos, and goldfish (Carassius auratus).

HC Orange No. 1 (HCO1; 2-nitro-4'-hydroxydiphenylamine) (CAS No. 54381-08-7) is used as a color additive in hair dyes and can be released into aquatic environments in wastewater. In this paper, the effects of HCO1 on aquatic organisms were studied using a battery of toxicological tests. These included measuring immobilization of Daphnia magna, inhibition of zebrafish embryo development, and acute lethality in zebrafish and goldfish, which are different species belonging to different trophic levels. HCO1 was toxic to all of the organisms studied. In our experiments, HCO1 remarkably restrained the mobility of D. magna, which may cause subsequent death. The EC50 value for restrained the mobility of D. magna at 48 h was 1.54 mg HCO1 l(-1). In addition, HCO1 showed toxicity in zebrafish and goldfish, where LC50 values at 96 h were 4.04 and 5.37 mg l(-1), respectively. The results also indicated that HCO1 remarkably retarded the development of zebrafish embryos, which may cause embryo abnormality and even lethality. The most sensitive toxicological endpoint in the development of the embryos was failure to hatch, which had an EC50 of 0.19 mg HCO1 l(-1). These results indicated that HCO1 is a potential teratogen to zebrafish embryos. In addition, as HCO1 concentrations increased, the outcomes of each of these toxicity tests changed in a concentration-dependent manner. Together, the results revealed that HCO1 appears to be toxic to multiple different species of aquatic organisms. The EC50 (LC50) values contain sufficient discriminatory power for risk assessment of HCO1 in aquatic environments. Based on the present results, more efficient risk assessment procedures for HCO1 will be designed in the future, integrating more flexible testing methods into the testing schemes that employ only the necessary tools for each case.