Chronic toxicity of endocrine disrupting chemicals used in plastic products in Korean resident species: Implications for aquatic ecological risk assessment

In this study, chronic toxicity of three endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) used to make plastic products (i.e., bisphenol A (BPA), bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) and nonylphenol (NP)) in a Korean resident fish (Cyprinus carpio), crustacean (Moina macrocopa) and green alga (Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata) species was tested. It was found that M. macrocopa was particularly sensitive to those EDCs, especially DEHP and NP. We exposed M. macrocopa to DEHP (0.0012–0.1 mg/L) and NP (0.00037–0.03 mg/L), and as a result, both chemicals significantly delayed the first day of reproduction. The no observed effect concentrations (NOECs) of DEHP and NP for this endpoint were determined to be 0.0012 and 0.00037 mg/L, respectively, which are far lower than NOECs for any other freshwater species. Existing water quality criteria of various governmental agencies do not consider the toxicity of those EDCs on M. macrocopa, and thus, use of the existing criteria for the risk assessment of the Korean freshwater environment may underestimate the ecological risk. This study recommends using the water quality criteria derived in this study (0.95 μg/L for DEHP and 0.16 μg/L for NP) based on the chronic toxicity data on Korean resident species including M. macrocopa for the aquatic ecological risk assessment in Korea rather than adopting the existing water quality criteria. [Display omitted] •Moina macrocopa was dramatically highly sensitive to DEHP and NP.•NOEC values of DEHP and NP on M. macrocopa were 1.2 and 0.37 μg/L, respectively.•This high sensitivity led to the derivation of conservative water quality criteria.•WQCs for DEHP and NP were derived to be 0.95 and 0.16 μg/L, respectively.