Low-toxic herbicides Roundup and Atrazine disturb free radical processes in Daphnia in environmentally relevant concentrations

The use of glyphosate-based Roundup and triazine herbicide Atrazine has increased markedly in last decades. Thus, it is important to evaluate toxic effects of these herbicides to non-targeted organisms such as zooplankton to understand their safety toward aquatic ecosystems. In the current study, we performed Daphnia toxicity tests based on lethality to identify LC₅₀ that provides acute aquatic toxicity classification criteria. LC₅₀ for Roundup exposure for 24 hours was found to be 0.022 mg/L and 48 hours - 0.0008 mg/L. Atrazine showed LC₅₀ at concentrations of 40 mg/L and 7 mg/L for 24 and 48 hours, respectively. We demonstrated that exposure to ecologically relevant concentrations of Roundup or Atrazine decreases lipid peroxidation and protein thiol levels, however caused increase in carbonyl protein and low-molecular-weight thiols content. Moreover, the herbicide treatments caused increase of superoxide dismutase activity. Our data suggest that at very low concentrations Roundup and Atrazine disturb free radical processes in D. magna.