Mutagenicity of three agricultural soils

Assessment of the Water-Extractable Genotoxic Potential of Soil Samples from Contaminated Sites

“…Measurement of the mutagenicity of these extracts can be described as &&worst-case scenario.'' Unfortunately, many uncontaminated samples are signi"cantly genotoxic after soxhlet extraction (Brown et al, 1985;Goggleman and Spitzauer, 1982;Koch, 1995). Due to this high background mutagenicity, caused, e.g., by humic substances, it is di$cult to distinguish between the mutagenic potential of noncontaminated soil samples and the mutagenic potential of soils that are obviously highly contaminated with mutagenic compounds.…”

Genotoxicity of Soil.

“…4,5,8,18) Goggleman and Spitzauer 5) examined n-hexane/acetone extracts of soil from several agricultural fields on which crops such as hops, asparagus, rye, oat pasture and meadow grew, and showed that all soil samples were mutagenic toward S. typhimurium TA98 and TA100 with some differences in potency. Brown et al 8) demonstrated that dichloromethane extracts of three types of agricultural soil exerted mutagenicity in a eukaryotic test using Aspergillus nidulans as well as Salmonella assay, and suggested that the activity was related to past agricultural practices, including biocide application, fertilization and cultivation. Inconsistent results were reported by Edenharder et al, however.…”

“…: +81-75-595-4650; Fax: +81-75-595-4769; E-mail: watanabe@mb. kyoto-phu.ac.jp forth using rat lung DNA, 21) bacteria, 8,12,14,19) cultured cells, 17) mice 17) and plants [21][22][23][24] have also been employed for this assessment. The coupling of the Salmonella mutation assay with other fractionation techniques, i.e.…”

“…[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] Other DNA damage assays, chromosome assays and so *To whom correspondence should be addressed: Department of Public Health, Kyoto Pharmaceutical University, 5 Nakauchicho, Misasagi, Yamashina-ku, Kyoto 607-8414, Japan. Tel.…”

“…The leachates from soil samples were generally made by shaking soil samples with aqueous 4,19,[21][22][23][24][25] and/or organic 9,11,18,21,23,25) solvents. An ultrasonic apparatus, 6,7,15,16,20) a Soxhlet extractor 5,[12][13][14]17) and so forth 8,10) were also used to obtain extracts of soil. In the genotoxicity assay of soil samples using plants, aqueous extracts of the soil samples were often used to treat the roots of plants or plant cuttings.…”