Abstract

Fish are a reliable biological model to measure the environmental impact of different substances. Argentina is an agricultural producer country where its main crops being grains such as soybeans, wheat and corn; To increase the yield of the crops a large amount of herbicides are used. Among these the most used has been glyphosate, but others such as 2,4D and atarzine are also used. We carried out in this work two types of acute toxicity comparative studies for three commercial herbicides formulated with glyphosate, 2-4D and atarzine. Firstly, the acute toxicity evaluation was carried out against Poecillia reticulata, measuring the mortality of juveniles species in an exposure period of up to 96hours; determining for glyphosate that a dose of 12mg/L produced 100% mortality and that 6mg/L did not cause mortality, thus differing from 2, 4D and atarzine, which at a concentration of 116.8mg/L and 48mg/L respectively did not cause mortality. In the second place, an embryo hatching study was carried out in Danio rerio following methodologies proposed by the OECD (Guidelines for the Testing of Chemicals) for sublethal doses of the herbicides (6mg/L), none of them having any effect on the hatching of the eggs.

Keywords: Herbicides; Glyphosate; 2,4D; atarzine; Fish; Acute toxicity