Genotoxicity of diesel exhaust emissions in a battery of in-vitro short-term and in-vivo bioassays.

The present studies confirm that diesel exhaust emissions are mutagenic in bacterial and mammalian mutation assays. Our results further indicate that mutagenic potential of the diesel tar samples can be reduced by exogenous metabolic activation with S15, and that Epstein-Barr-virus transformed lymphoblastoid cell lines from Bloom syndrome, and Xeroderma Pigmentosum patients with a high incidence of malignant tumors showed an larger production of SCEs while those from Fanconi anemia patients had an lower frequency of SCEs when exposed to the diesel emission condensate, compared to those from normal healthy persons. On the contrary to the results of in-vitro studies, the in-vivo SCE and micronucleus assays using mouse and rat bone marrow cells gave negative responses.