Population Cytogenetic and Anthropological Research on Emvironmental Pollution in Manila.

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Urbanization sometimes causes social welfare issues such as environmental pollution and a flow of population into metropolitan area to form the urban poor. The purpose of this study was to establish systems to monitor the cytogenetic and biological effects of environmental pollutants on the health of residents of a dumpsite located in the suburbs of Manila. In a field survey conducted in 2000/2001, we detected a significant elevation of the frequencies of sister-chromatid exchanges (SCEs) in peripheral blood lymphocytes collected from volunteers who lived in the heavily polluted dumpsite for more than ten years. The results suggested that the pollution in the dumpsite had genotoxic hazardous potential, and the dumpsite scavengers had been exposed to environmental mutagens that induced SCEs. It was, however, difficult to specify the mutagenic components contained in pollutants. After our survey, the dumpsite was closed and the residents were locked out. They moved to a newly constructed dumpsite. In contrast with the results of our first survey, no significant elevation of SCEs was detected in the second survey conducted in 2004. This discrepancy may be attributed to the decreased level of environmental mutagens in current residential regions. As control experiments, cytogenetic studies were conducted on the miners of gold mines in southern part of Mindanao. We found an elevated frequency of structural chromosome aberrations in the peripheral blood lymphocytes. To compare the genetic differences of these populations in terms of detoxication metabolism, polymorphic genes such as GSTP1 and NAT2 were analyzed.