title: 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.
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Nuclear Analytical Techniques, CAS Key Lab for Biomedical Effects of Nanomaterials and Nanosafety, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Haifeng
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Xiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: He
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.forename: Xiaomei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Zhiyong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Zhifang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Chai
authors.forename: Yuliang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhao
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000254:growth & development; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D054750:Ecotoxicology; D048788:Growth and Development / Q000187:drug effects; D007811:Lanthanum / Q000378:metabolism / Q000633:toxicity*; D008018:Life Cycle Stages / Q000187:drug effects; D012098:Reproduction / Q000187:drug effects; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013052:Spectrometry, X-Ray Emission; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000378:metabolism / Q000633:toxicity*
chemical_list: D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical; D007811:Lanthanum