Mutagenic and genotoxic potential of native air borne particulate matter from industrial area of Rourkela city, Odisha, India.

In this study, we examined potential adverse health effect of particulate matter (PM) collected from industrial areas of Rourkela, Odisha, India. Results indicate that PM in these areas contains benzo[a]pyrene in addition to other unidentified molecules. Ames test revealed the above PM to be highly mutagenic. Further studies of PM in HaCaT cells suggest its DNA damaging potential which may lead to apoptosis. Generation of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species following PM exposure may be an early event in the PM induced apoptosis. In addition, the activity of cytochrome P450 (CYP450), the key xenobiotic metabolism enzyme, was found to be increased following PM exposure indicating its role in PM induced toxicity. To confirm this, we used genetic and pharmacological inhibitors of CYP450 like CYP1B1 siRNA and Clotrimazole. Interestingly, we found that the use of these inhibitors significantly suppressed the PM induced apoptosis in HaCaT cells, which confirm the crucial role of CYP1B1 in the toxic manifestation of PM. For further analysis, blood samples were collected from the volunteer donor and analyzed for immunophenotypes and comet assay to survey any change in immune cells and DNA damage in blood cells respectively. The study was performed with 55 blood samples including 32 from industrial areas and 23 people from non-industrial zone of Rourkela city. Samples had a mean±SD age of 35±6.2years (35 men and 20 women). Our investigation did not observe any significant alteration in lymphocytes (P=0.671), B cell (P=0.104), cytotoxic T cell (P=0.512), helper T cell (P=0.396), NK cell (P=0.675) and monocytes (P=0.170) of blood cells from these two groups. Taken together; this study first time reports the possible health hazards of PM from industrial areas of Odisha, India.