• Environmental Mutagens and Carcinogens
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.23-29
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• 2001

The NBP assay was conducted to determine the photomutagenic or photocarcinogenic potential of alkylating agents. Using a 4-NBP in vitro technique, whereby photochemical treatment on CAS (Chemical Activation System) was performed to investigate the enhancement effect, 20 compounds were shown to undergo alkylating mechanisms with 4-NBP. Chemically meaningful results were obtained with different sets of 20 compounds for the alkylating activities due to the UV irradiation, demonstrating that all of the testing compounds showed increasing photoalkylating effects either in the presence or absence of CAS in comparison with previously reported data, except furoic acid and fumaric acid that showed decreasing effect in the presence of a CAS. Caffeine did not show a meaningful result either. However, these findings demonstrate the effects of potential photoalkylating activity in chemical activation system (CAS) and suggest a potential risk-ranking system for the in vivo assays.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.43-50
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• 2001

This paper reviews the results of a series of efforts to develop structure-activity models for slow-reacting chemicals and olefins whose toxicity may be enhanced by the ultraviolet radiation. Photoinduced toxicity of 14 compounds was found to be a different result of competing factors of structure, having carbon-carbon double bonds. To mimic the biological consequences of photooxidative damage in mammalian cells, the photochemical mutagenicith of 14 chemicals was tested in the CAS. Simple olefins were photochemically mutagenic or carcinogenic with irradiation, increasing the alkylating activity from zero level to 0.87(abs/gram) for styrene, 0.25 for 1-butene, 0.11 for 1-hexene, respectively, whereas no photochemical mutagenicity was observed with 1-octene in the absence of the CAS. Oxide compounds, however, showed a decreasing trend of photoalkylating activities in the presence or absence of the CAS. We found that the structure-activity relationship was not applicable to our data.