Investigation of the Genotoxic Potential of the Waters of a River Receiving Tannery Effluents by Means of the in vitro Comet Assay

Summary The comet assay has been described as an efficient tool for the detection of changes in the DNA molecule of cells exposed to contaminating agents in vivo and in vitro. The possible envi-ronmental contamination due to the persistence of chromium residues from tannery effluents was de-termined in the waters of the “Córrego dos Bagres ” stream, Municipal district of Franca/SP, by the comet assay on CHO-K1 cells. Water samples were collected during the four seasons of the year 2001 at three distinct stations along the river. The data suggest that the comet test showed good sen-sitivity for the environmental monitoring of these waters and indicated that this test can be efficient for the determination of the quality of waters contaminated with effluents containing heavy metal residues such as chromium. Key words Comet assay, Chromium, Genotoxicity, CHO-K1. Industrialization and urbanization processes have turned the question of environmental conta-mination increasingly critical. The contamination of aquatic ecosystems with substances originating from industrial wastes is a matter that is not always treated with the importance it deserves, despite the concern raised by the harmful effects of these substances, with a consequent alteration of conti-nental water quality (White and Rasmussen 1998)