A Comparison of the Human Buccal Cell Assay and the Pollen Abortion Assay in Assessing Genotoxicity in an Urban-Rural Gradient

Abstract

Air pollution is exacerbated near heavy traffic roads in cities. Air pollution concentration and composition vary by region and depend on urban-rural gradients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the distribution of air pollution in areas of varying population densities and to compare plant biomonitoring with an established biomarker of human exposure to traffic-related air pollution in children. The areas of study were selected near a major street in 3 different regions. Areas A, B and C represent high, intermediate and low population densities, respectively. Micronucleus assay, an established biomarker of human exposure, was performed in children from these areas. For a plant biomonitoring assay, the pollen abortion assay was performed on Bauhinia variegata in these areas. NO2 and O3 concentrations were determined by passive sampling. We report here that the pollen abortion frequency in Bauhinia variegata is correlated with NO2 concentration (P = 0.004) and is strongly associated with vehicular flow and population density in the studied areas. Micronuclei frequency in buccal cells of children was higher in the regions with more degree of urbanization (P < 0.001) following the same pattern of O3 concentrations (P = 0.030). In conclusion, our results demonstrate that high concentrations of air pollutants in Porto Alegre are related to both human and plant genotoxicity. Areas with different concentration of pollutants demonstrated to have an urbanization gradient dependent pattern which also reflected on genotoxic damage among these areas.

Is micronucleus assay in oral exfoliated cells a suitable tool for biomonitoring children exposed to environmental pollutants? A systematic review

“…Another four works found some results related to highintensity traffic exposure, where Fleck et al (2014) used three groups to carry out their analysis, where the first two groups of children lived in cities with a high content of traffic-related air pollution and a control group living in a city with better air quality. The authors found a higher frequency of micronuclei in the exposed group.…”

“…The year 2021 was the most recent publication year found and 2012 the oldest. The order of countries that appeared with the most publications on the subject was Italy (Ceretti et al 2014(Ceretti et al , 2020De Donno et al 2016;Idolo et al 2018;Marcon et al 014;Panico et al 2020;Villarini et al 2018), Brazil (Alpire et al 2021;Cavalcante et al 2017;Fleck et al 2014;Silva et al 2015;Sisenando et al 2012), Malaysia (Chokeli et al 2019;Hisamuddin et al 2020;How et al 2014), Mexico (Anguiano-Vega et al 2020Gomez-Arroyo et al, 2013;López Guzmán et al 2017), Argentina (Bernardi et al 2015), and Iraq (Sabah 2021). The results of the characteristics of the included studies are shown in Table 1.…”

“…Of the 20 studies, 12 related to children exposed to air pollution (Cavalcante et al, 2017;Ceretti et al 2014Ceretti et al , 2020De Donno et al 2016;Fleck et al 2014;Hisamuddin et al 2020;Idolo et al 2018;Marcon et al 2014;Panico et al 2020;Sabah, 2021;Silva et al 2015;Sisenando et al, 2012); four reported exposures to pesticides (Anguiano-Vega et al 2020;Bernardi et al 2015;Gomez-Arroyo et al 2013;How et al 2014); two about lifestyle (Alpire et al 2021;Villarini et al 2018); and finally, one article researched exposure to arsenic (López Guzmán et al, 2017) and another to a mobile base station (Chokeli et al 2019). The youngest age found in the articles was 7 months while the oldest was 16 years.…”

“…Cytogenetic damage has been closely associated with chronicle degenerative diseases and is therefore an indispensable method for monitoring the child population continuously exposed to environmental pollution (Xavier et al 2017). This is because a micronucleus test is an easy, precise method and has a limited cost, no cell replication step, minimally invasive, and mainly does not expose children to psychological and physical stress (Fleck et al 2014). The micronucleus is generated by chromosome breakage or loss during cell division, and the fragments are not included in the nuclei of daughter cells at the end of mitosis (Durmaz et al 2019).…”

Air quality assessment using the Pollen Abortion assay in Tradescantia pallida in a Mid-sized City in Southern Brazil

“…It is possible that the use of a plant genotoxicity assay (pollen abortion assay) in conjunction with measurements of ozone concentrations may serve as an alternative for assessing regional air quality. The study, carried out by Fleck et al (15) in a city with a high demographic density, demonstrated the possible relation between high ozone concentrations and genotoxicity in plants through the pollen abortion test. In addition, this pollutant can be measured through passive monitoring, which, in addition to being a simple and less expensive apparatus, also allows to obtain a pollution gradient for the studied region.…”