Abstract
To determine the toxicological effects of complex mixtures of pesticides, we obtained data on 100 pesticide residues in common food. of central Italy. Fifteen pesticides were more regularly detected at higher levels (dithiocarbamates, benomyllcarbendazim, thiabendazole, diphenylamine, chlorthalonil, procymidone, fenarimol, chlorpropham, vinchlozolin, methidathion, chlorpyriphos-ethyl, parathion-methyl, parathion, chlorfenviphos, pirimiphos-ethyl). Using itemized data on daily food consumption in Italy, we calculated that the average exposure for an adult subject was 716 μg/day, ranging fiom 148 μg of dithiocarbamates to 1 pg of pirimiphos-ethyl. We made a mixture of these 15 pesticides at concentrations proportional to the ratio determined in foods and tested it with the Salmonellamicrosome assay, with and without metabolic activation with PCB-induced rat liver S9. No mutagenic activity was observed at concentrations up to 500 μg/plate. We also tested the same mixture at concentrations ranging from 0.1 to 20 μg/ml on human lymphocytes in vitro, and observed a slight but statistically significant increase in sister-chromatid exchanges at 1 μg/ml. We also administered the mixture in corn oil by gavage to Wistar rats at doses of 1, 10, and 100 μg/kg. After 24 hr the ratio between bone marrowpolychromatic and normochromatic lymphocytes (a sign of cellular toxicity) was decreased by the exposure, but we did not observe a significant increase in the frequency of micronuclei. We conclude that thepesticide mixture did not have appreciablegenotoxic activity in the assays used.
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Abbreviations
- SCE:
-
sister-chromatid exchanges
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Dolara, P., Vezzani, A., Caderni, G. et al. Genetic toxicity of a mixture of fifteen pesticides commonly found in the Italian diet. Cell Biol Toxicol 9, 333–343 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00754461
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00754461