Estudi sobre la toxicitat dels olis essencials Pimpinella anisum, Ocimum basilicum i Eucalyptus globulus sobre el peix zebra Danio rerio

Abstract

The use of pesticidal products that have the least impact on the environment is widely acknowledged. Essential oils from a wide variety of plants have been used as insect repellents and larvicides for centuries. Nevertheless, the research that has evaluated the toxicity of essential oils in vertebrates is scarce or completely missing. This paper aims to test the toxicity of essential oils of green anise (Pimpinella anisum), basil (Ocimum basilicum) and blue eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) with aquatic vertebrates. These oils are recognized larvicides. Embryos of less than 64 hours of zebra fish (Danio rerio) were used as a non-target organisms to conduct toxicity tests using concentrations of 70μL / L, 50μL / L and 20μL / L of the three oils The results obtained were used to find lethal concentration at which 50 of the tested organisms (LC 50) died through a Probit function. For anise, in the case of zebrafish, LC 50 was 48.47 μL / L while for eucalyptus and basil oils this concentration could not be found because we could not find dead more than half of the organisms in the treatments. In the case of mosquito larvae, similar results were found being the LC 50 for anise oil 59.97 μL / L. Again, we could not find the LC 50 for eucalyptus oils and basil. The differences between treatments were significant in the case of the experiments with anise, both with zebrafish embryos and mosquito larvae. These results support the efficacy of aniseed oil as larvicide but warn about the danger of using it in the environment. While basil and eucalyptus oils appear to be effective larvicides from other studies, our results do not support these findings and provide relevant information about the safety of these oils with vertebrates. Our results indicate the need to carry out specific tests with non-target organisms before accepting a priori that essential oils with larvicidal properties are safe for other all organisms living in aquatic systems