Nitrogen dioxide inhalation induces genotoxicity in rats.

Ming Han, Zhen Guo, Guangke Li, Nan Sang

College of Environment and Resource, Center of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, Shanxi 030006, PR China.

Chemosphere 2013 Mar

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Nitrogen dioxide (NO(2)) is a ubiquitous reactive free-radical gas, which has been associated with momentary and chronic health effects. In the present study, comet, micronucleus (MN) and DNA-protein crosslinks (DPC) assays were used to investigate the genotoxicity following in vivo inhalation exposure of rats to NO(2). The results show that inhalation exposure of rats to NO(2) induced DNA strand breakage and the formation of DPC in the cells from various internal organs (brain, lung, liver, spleen, kidney and heart), as well as resulted in obvious increase of MN frequency in the bone marrow cells of rats. Furthermore, above genotoxic responses showed significant linear dose-dependent manners. These results implicate that NO(2) is a genotoxic agent and these observations are informative for understanding the mechanisms of adverse effects of nitrogen dioxide. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.