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ARSENIC COMPOUNDS MAY CAUSE GENETIC DAMAGE
Release Date: 04/19/2001
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FOR RELEASE: THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2001
ARSENIC COMPOUNDS MAY CAUSE GENETIC DAMAGE
Martha (Matheny) Casey 202-564-7842 / matheny.martha@epa.gov
A team of EPA scientists at EPA’s Office of Research and Development laboratory in North Carolina have discovered a possible, direct link to DNA damage caused by arsenic compounds. The research demonstrates a human cell’s own metabolic responses to arsenic exposure produce compounds that cause genetic damage. An EPA toxicologist and colleagues from the agency’s National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, with associates at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, NC, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, studied the effects of methylated trivalent arsenic on human lymphocytes in culture and on isolated DNA. The study found that methylated trivalent arsenic derivatives, which can be produced by the body in an attempt to detoxify arsenic, result in reactive compounds that cause DNA to break. EPA said the findings have potential for being used to quantitate genetic damage in human populations exposed to arsenic. Inorganic arsenic, which occurs naturally in water and soil in certain parts of the U.S. has been linked to cancer of the skin and internal organs as well as other diseases. For years, scientists have searched for an interaction of arsenic compounds with DNA. The present research shows arsenic actually can induce these genetic alterations by direct DNA interaction. An article on the research, entitled Trivalent methylated arsenic species are genotoxic, was published in the April 16 issue of "Chemical Research in Toxicology."
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