2026/06/15 by Mahmoud Abdelrahman Alatteili, Hamzeh ‘Ayed El-Amin’ Hassan Abid, Mohammad Talat Elsharkawy +4 · 1 voice
Environmental Science · #Effects and risks of endocrine disrupting chemicals #Microplastics and Plastic Pollution #Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.2340/biid.v13.46213
openalex publication_date 2026/06/15 · openalex created_date 2026/06/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/26
Introduction: The increasing use of resin-based dental materials has prompted questions about their environmental footprint. During clinical procedures, small amounts of unpolymerized monomers may enter wastewater systems, and their possible effects on aquatic invertebrates remain insufficiently explored. We hypothesized that commonly used resin-based dental monomers could exert developmental and cellular effects in an aquatic invertebrate model. Materials and Methods: at both cyst and naupliar stages. The effects on naupliar survival, body length, and Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity were measured to assess compound-specific biological responses. Results: Bis-GMA, Bis-DMA, and BPA significantly reduced survival, while Bis-EMA caused modest mortality, and TEG-DMA had no effect. Despite these differences in survival, most monomers affected naupliar growth, with greater developmental sensitivity observed following cyst-stage exposure. However, growth responses were compound specific and not uniformly dose-dependent across all monomers. LDH responses were monomer specific: Bis-GMA and Bis-DMA increased LDH activity, although Bis-DMA showed no consistent effect on growth, whereas BPA and TEG-DMA showed reductions in LDH activity, despite observed growth inhibition, and Bis-EMA showed no significant change. Conclusion: Taken together, our findings show that dental resin monomers differ in their developmental and metabolic impacts, highlighting the importance of considering safety alongside clinical performance when designing and selecting dental biomaterials. As the concentrations used were for hazard screening, these results indicate possible biological effects under controlled conditions but do not necessarily reflect environmental exposure scenarios or ecological risk. Additional studies at environmentally relevant exposure levels are needed to better evaluate ecological safety and support the development of more sustainable dental materials.