Mutagenicity of the photochemical reaction products of pyrene with nitrogen dioxide.

The mutagenicity of the photochemical reaction products of pyrene with nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and the mutagens in them were investigated for the interpretation of their biological significance as genetoxic hazards of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in airborne particles. Samples extracted from the photochemical reaction products of pyrene with NO2 diluted with air using a high-pressure mercury lamp were mutagenic for Salmonella typhimurium strains TA97 and TA98 in the absence of S9 mix, with a trend to detoxification in the presence of the metabolic system. The mutagens in the crude samples extracted from their products, which were fractionated by normal-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) on a column of Nucleosil 100-30 with n-hexane-benzene as an eluting solution, were analyzed by HPLC, mass spectrometry and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrometry. Based on these results, it was recognized that 1-nitropyrene (1-NP), 1,3-dinitropyrene (1,3-DNP), 1,6-dinitropyrene (1,6-DNP) and 1,8-dinitropyrene (1,8-DNP) was formed by the photochemical reaction of pyrene with NO2. The yield of DNPs peaked at 2-3 h irradiation.