Toxicological effects of endocrine disruptors: a focus on the relationship between health and environment
emerging pollutants; endocrine disruptors; cytotoxicity; mutagenicity; environmental risk perception.
The emerging pollutants are a class of substances that may have natural or anthropogenic origin. Pharmaceutical compounds are among this group that most need attention, both for the continuous quantity introduced into the environment and the potencial to cause adverse effects. One of the attitudes that contribute to the increasing environmental degradation in the indiscriminate use of medicinal drugs and their inappropriate disposal, which in turn persist in the effluents even after the treatments received and return to the aquatic matrices. Women have a relationship with drugs due to physiological, cultural and social factors. It is already well known that drug residues of hormonal origin cause concern due to their ability to interfere with the endocrine system of exposed organisms. However, few studies have investigate the relationship of damage to the genetic material of organisms exposed to such contaminants. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation is to evaluate the cytotoxic and mutagenic potential of two hormones through in vitro assays on the HepG2 cell line associated with the assessment of environmental risk perception on the use and disposal of drugs. To evaluate the cytotoxic potential, the cell viability assay was used through the MTT reduction test; for the evaluation of mutagenicity using the CBMN and the perception of environmental risk was investigate using a questionnaire with university students at the Federal University of the Rio Grande do Norte. The results showed that even understanding the environmental and health consequences of drug contamination, there was insufficiency in the practical implementation of knowledge through pro-environmental attitudes. In addition, training trendswere evidenced according to the area of knowledge of the students. The results also showed that exogenous hormone compounds presente in different environmental compartments, mainly aquatic, have the potential to cause changes in the genetic material of human liver cells.Therefore, the whole of this dissertation comes to the conclusion that all these factors associated with the socio-environmental problem presented may be contributing to the contamination and consequently to the probable interference of the regular genetic operation of exposed organisms.