Efficient atrazine degradation catalyzed by manganese porphyrins: Determination of atrazine degradation products and their toxicity evaluation by human blood cells test models.

ABSTRACT

Atrazine (ATZ) is an herbicide that has been considered an environmental pollutant worldwide. ATZ contaminates groundwaters and can persist in soils for up to a year causing several environmental and health problems. This study aimed to investigate ATZ degradation catalyzed by manganese porphyrins as biomimetic cytochrome P450 models. We used PhIO, PhI(OAc)2, H2O2, t-BuOOH, m-CPBA, or Oxone® as oxidant under mild conditions and evaluated a range of manganese porphyrins as catalyst. Concerning oxidant, iodosylbenzene provided the best result-ATZ degradation catalyzed by one of the studied manganese porphyrins in acetonitrile was as high as 47%. We studied the same catalyst/oxidant systems in natural water from a Brazilian river as solvent and obtained up to 100% ATZ degradation when iodobenzene diacetate was the oxidant, regardless of the manganese porphyrin. Besides the already known ATZ degradation products, we also identified unexpected degradation compounds (ring-opening products). Toxicity tests showed that the latter products were capable of proliferate blood cells because they did not show toxicity under the evaluated conditions.