Biological monitoring of occupational exposure to mutagenic chemicals in the rubber industry. Use of the bacterial urinary mutagenicity assay.

The assay of mutagenicity in the urine with the bacterial fluctuation test was used as an approach to monitor the exposure to mutagenic chemicals among 129 rubber workers. Especially those workers exposed to chemical dusts or fumes showed high mutagenicity in their urine. Smoking was also found to increase mutagenicity in the urine, but this effect could be detected only with the frame-shift detector strain Salmonella typhimurium TA 98. Escherichia coli WP 2 uvrA could thus be used to monitor the occupational exposure to base-pair substitution mutagens, without the interfering effect of smoking.