Postnatal Mouse Heart and Lung Lysosome RNAase Levels in Response to Air Pollutants

Abstract

For some time we have been studying the response of cell culture systems to air samples from regions of strikingly different air quality. The high air pollution site (SHU) is located in So. Orange, New Jersey about 20 km from New York City. It is within 5 km of three major highways linking the New Jersey-New York metropolitan area with the Philadelphia region. There are at least 10 million inhabitants within a 50 km radius of SHU. It is at an elevation of about 30 meters and about 30 km from the Atlantic ocean. Some higher elevation is found 100–150 km to the northwest but it is an ineffective barrier to air trajectory pollution from the industrialized regions to the west^1,2. The low air pollution site (BW-LAB) is in the Adirondack mountains of northern New York State about 50 km from the nearest express highway linking New York City with Montreal. It is in a valley of about 300 m elevation surrounded by peaks ranging from 1,000–1,600 m which tend to divert western pollution plumes³. It is in Wilmington, population of 800. Since our results had shown detrimental effects on normal cells^4,5 we thought it useful to include animal systems for study. The use of lysosome response in cell pathology has been thoroughly documented since the early work of Allison on carcinogen uptake by lysosomes⁶ and because our cell culture studies had indicated lysosome changes we decided to focus on lysosome enzyme changes in selected organs of mice born in the two regions.