ENDOCRINE DISRUPTING EFFECTS OF BUTYLPARABEN: A REVIEW

In recent years, there has been an increasing concern in the field of endocrine disruption over the presence of various endocrine disrupting chemicals in Pharmaceuticals and Personal care products (PPCPs). This concern has also been as PPCPs are most widely used and had led to introduction of thousands of new and complex chemicals that enter the environment in large quantities. The effect of the chemicals has not only been restricted to human who are exposed directly to the chemicals or the animals which gets exposed to the chemicals through wide variety of veterinary drugs, but also the aquatic organisms and other form of Wildlife which are non target and indirectly gets exposed to the chemicals through individual human activity. Parabens includes a group of compound of which methylparaben, butylparaben, ethylparaben, propylparaben are most widely used as preservatives in various PPCPs. Recent concern over the use of parabens has been drawn by the scientific community as these chemicals are reported to exert a weak estrogenic activity, with butylparaben showing the most potent activity among methyl-, ethyl- and propyl esters in in vitro recombinant yeast assay and in in vivo uterotrophic assay. Human exposure to butylparaben which occur mainly through inhalation, ingestion, or eye or skin contact, from intake of foods or drugs or use of cosmetics and personal care products where butylparaben is mainly used as a preservative. Effects of butylparaben are studied in various animal model systems like rodents to determine the possible effects in human which showed various effects which include defects in male reproductive system like increase in weight of epididymis, also change in serum testosterone level and a significant increase in uterine weight in ovariectomized and immature rats. Other effects include irritation to the respiratory tract, allergic skin reactions, atrophy of lymphoid tissue in the spleen, thymus, and lymph nodes and multifocal degeneration and necrosis in the liver parenchyma were also observed. The aquatic effects of butylparaben include the feminization of male fish and alteration of the behaviors of either sex at part-per-trillion concentrations. A multitude of other aquatic effects are possible because hormone systems are central to the development, functioning, and reproduction of most organisms.