This study concerns the assessment of genotoxicity in the urban air of Caserta, a town with heavy car traffic in Southern Italy. Tradescantia-micronucleus (Trad-MCN) assay was applied to establish the urban gradient of pollutants in the air matrix. The in situ monitoring was carried out by exposing young inflorescences of the plant cuttings for 24h at seventeen sampling points in two different seasons of the year. Pollutants induced chromosomic aberrations become micronuclei in the synchronized tetrads and they can be easily identified and scored. The increase in frequency of micronuclei was expressed in terms of MCN/100 tetrads. Collected data were processed using Dunnett’s test to determine the level of significance against the negative control values in each experimental series. The results were closely associated with the weather, the velocity of wind, the temperature and the relative humidity. Significant increases in the frequency of micronuclei were observed in different points of the town grid indicating the good applicability of Trad-MCN for monitoring the presence of hazardous air contaminants.
IN SITU MONITORING WITH TRADESCANTIA- MICRONUCLEUS ASSAY ON THE GENOTOXICITY OF URBAN AIR IN SOUTHERN ITALY
ISIDORI, Marina;
2001
Abstract
This study concerns the assessment of genotoxicity in the urban air of Caserta, a town with heavy car traffic in Southern Italy. Tradescantia-micronucleus (Trad-MCN) assay was applied to establish the urban gradient of pollutants in the air matrix. The in situ monitoring was carried out by exposing young inflorescences of the plant cuttings for 24h at seventeen sampling points in two different seasons of the year. Pollutants induced chromosomic aberrations become micronuclei in the synchronized tetrads and they can be easily identified and scored. The increase in frequency of micronuclei was expressed in terms of MCN/100 tetrads. Collected data were processed using Dunnett’s test to determine the level of significance against the negative control values in each experimental series. The results were closely associated with the weather, the velocity of wind, the temperature and the relative humidity. Significant increases in the frequency of micronuclei were observed in different points of the town grid indicating the good applicability of Trad-MCN for monitoring the presence of hazardous air contaminants.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
