| Summary: | Heavy metals cause irreversible neurobehavioral damage in many developing mammals, but the mechanisms of this damage are unknown. The influence of three heavy metal compounds, triethyllead chloride, lead acetate, and cadmium chloride, on lethality, development, behavior and learning was studied using the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Drosophila was used because it has been extensively characterized genetically at the molecular level, and it allows hundreds of subjects to be used very easily in individual experiments. The larva LC50 $\pm$ standard error for triethyllead chloride, lead acetate, or cadmium chloride was found to be 0.090 $\pm$ 0.004 mM, 6.60 $\pm$ 0.64 mM, or 0.42 $\pm$ 0.04 mM, respectively. Each of the tested compounds produced a dose-related delay in development. In particular, they caused an increase in the time for larvae to develop into pupae. When larvae were reared on medium containing triethyllead chloride (0.06 mM), lead acetate (3.07 mM), or cadmium chloride (0.11 mM), phototaxis, locomotion, and learning in the resulting adults were not inhibited. Since significant neurobehavioral effects were not observed under the experimental conditions used, Drosophila does not appear to be an appropriate animal for the genetic dissection of the neurobehavioral toxic effects of heavy metals.
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