Accessing the Health Risk of Ingestion of Surface Water from Lucrécia and Parelhas Dams in Northeast Brazil Using the Sentinel Organism Drosophila melanogaster.

This study investigated the genotoxic risk of chronic exposure of hemolymph's cells of Drosophila melanogaster (Insecta, Diptera) to water samples from Boqueirão de Parelhas Dam and from Lucrécia Dam in the semiarid region of Brazil. The dams are located over the Pegmatite Province of Borborema, with rocks rich in uranium and thorium. Water samples hydrated a culture medium composed of mashed potatoes, where larvae of D. melanogaster fed for 24 h, before be underwent to the Comet assay. The same water was evaluated for the presence of dissolved Radon gas (222Rn) and concentrations of 11 toxic metals (Ag, Al, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb and Zn). The results indicated a genotoxic effect resulting from exposure to the waters of the Parelhas dam, in the samples of August 2018; and in Lucrécia dam, in January 2019. D. melanogaster stood out for its high sensitivity to monitor the genotoxic effects of compounds dissolved in public dams. And unlike to other essentially aquatic sentinel organisms, this species stood out as a model to concomitant studies of air and water possible contaminated, in a scenario of natural environmental radioactivity present in semiarid of Brazil.

Application crude multienzyme extract from Aspergillus niger as a pretreatment for the extraction of essential oil from Croton argyrophyllus leaves.

Leaves of Croton argyrophyllus contain essential oil with promising active components for the development of drugs and botanical insecticides. In this study, we evaluated the enzymatic pretreatment process to increase the extraction of essential oil from fresh and dried leaves of C. argyrophyllus. Pretreatment was carried out using a crude multienzymatic extract obtained via solid-state fermentation of forage palm by Aspergillus niger, and the extraction was performed by hydrodistillation. A Doehlert matrix was used to optimize the enzymatic pretreatment variables temperature and enzymatic extract. The effect of pretreatment time was also investigated. At optimum experimental conditions, 41.34°C, 140 min, and 130.73 mL of enzyme in 369.27 mL of water, the essential oil yield from fresh leaves subjected to enzymatic pretreatment increased by 9.35% and that from dry leaves by 6.77%. Based on chromatographic analysis (GC-MS), no compound was degraded in the extraction process. Micromorphological analysis confirmed the rupture of the glandular trichomes, favoring essential oil release. Therefore, enzymatic pretreatment associated with hydrodistillation increased the essential oil yield and is a promising application to obtain essential oil for therapeutic purposes without altering its composition.