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Abstract
<p xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="first" dir="auto"
id="d8451233e107">Oxygenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (oxy-PAHs) are a group
of environmental
pollutants found in complex mixtures together with PAHs. In contrast to the extensively
studied PAHs, which have been established to have mutagenic and carcinogenic properties,
much less is known about the effects of oxy-PAHs. The present work aimed to investigate
the genotoxic potency of a set of environmentally relevant oxy-PAHs along with environmental
soil samples in human bronchial epithelial cells (HBEC). We found that all oxy-PAHs
tested induced DNA strand breaks in a dose-dependent manner and some of the oxy-PAHs
further induced micronuclei formation. Our results showed weak effects in response
to the oxy-PAH containing subfraction of the soil sample. The genotoxic potency was
confirmed in both HBEC and HepG2 cells following exposure to oxy-PAHs by an increased
level of phospho-Chk1, a biomarker used to estimate the carcinogenic potency of PAHs
in vitro. We further exposed zebrafish embryos to single oxy-PAHs or a binary mixture
with PAH benzo[a]pyrene (B[a]P) and found the mixture to induce comparable or greater
effects on the induction of DNA strand breaks compared to the sum of that induced
by B[a]P and oxy-PAHs alone. In conclusion, oxy-PAHs were found to elicit genotoxic
effects at similar or higher levels to that of B[a]P which indicates that oxy-PAHs
may contribute significantly to the total carcinogenic potency of environmental PAH
mixtures. This emphasizes further investigations of these compounds as well as the
need to include oxy-PAHs in environmental monitoring programs in order to improve
health risk assessment.
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