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Roberto Danovaro,¹ Lucia Bongiorni,¹ Cinzia Corinaldesi,¹ Donato Giovannelli,¹ Elisabetta Damiani,² Paola Astolfi,³ Lucedio Greci,³ and Antonio Pusceddu¹

¹Department of Marine Sciences, ²Institute of Biochemistry, and ³Department of Chemical Sciences and Technologies, Faculty of Science, Polytechnic University of the Marche, Ancona, Italy

Abstract
Background: Coral bleaching (i.e., the release of coral symbiotic zooxanthellae) has negative impacts on biodiversity and functioning of reef ecosystems and their production of goods and services. This increasing world-wide phenomenon is associated with temperature anomalies, high irradiance, pollution, and bacterial diseases. Recently, it has been demonstrated that personal care products, including sunscreens, have an impact on aquatic organisms similar to that of other contaminants.

Objectives: Our goal was to evaluate the potential impact of sunscreen ingredients on hard corals and their symbiotic algae.

Methods: In situ and laboratory experiments were conducted in several tropical regions (the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, and the Red Sea) by supplementing coral branches with aliquots of sunscreens and common ultraviolet filters contained in sunscreen formula. Zooxanthellae were checked for viral infection by epifluorescence and transmission electron microscopy analyses.

Results: Sunscreens cause the rapid and complete bleaching of hard corals, even at extremely low concentrations. The effect of sunscreens is due to organic ultraviolet filters, which are able to induce the lytic viral cycle in symbiotic zooxanthellae with latent infections.

Conclusions: We conclude that sunscreens, by promoting viral infection, potentially play an important role in coral bleaching in areas prone to high levels of recreational use by humans.

Key words: bleaching, corals, sunscreens, UV filters, viruses. Environ Health Perspect 116:441–447 (2008) . doi:10.1289/ehp.10966 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 3 January 2008]

Address correspondence to R. Danovaro, Department of Marine Sciences, Faculty of Science, Polytechnic University of the Marche, Via Brecce Bianche, 60131 Ancona, Italy. Telephone: 39-071-2204654. Fax: 39-071-2204650. E-mail: r.danovaro@univpm.it

We thank M. Marelli and L. Gobbi for support in transmission electron microscopy analysis and D. Fattorini and S. Bompadre for support in high performance liquid chromatographic analysis.

This work was financially supported by the European Union within the framework of the CORALZOO (development of a SME-friendly European breeding programme for hard corals) research project for small medium enterprises (CT-2005-012547) and the REEFRES (Developing Ubiquitous Restoration Practices for Indo-Pacific Coral Reefs ; INCO-CT-2005-510657) project.

The authors declare they have no competing financial interests.

Received 9 October 2007 ; accepted 3 January 2008.

Correction

In Table 2, the log K_ow value for 2-ethylhexyl salicylate has been corrected from "NA" in the original version published online to "6.02."