DNA damage in human lymphocytes in vitro exposed to combined metals

人类每天都暴露在低水平的环境和职业金属中。因此，对单一化学品在高水平暴露下进行的毒性试验的结果很难外推到这些环境中的化学混合物的风险评估。本研究以砷、镉、钴、铬四种公认的致癌物或共致癌物为研究对象，探讨了低浓度二元混合金属对体外培养的人淋巴细胞DNA的损伤作用是加和、协同还是拮抗，结果表明，单一暴露与二元混合金属对任何金属组合的DNA损伤作用均无显著性差异。因此，未观察到与加和性的偏离。我们的研究结果支持的假设，即个人暴露于低无毒剂量的化学品的混合物是加性或小于加性。

Human are exposed daily to low level of environmental and occupational metals. Therefore, results of the toxicity tests which conducted on single-chemical at high level exposure are difficult to extrapolate to the risk assessment of the chemical mixtures in these environments. In this study, we focused on four metals (arsenic, cadmium, cobalt and chromium) which are recognized as carcinogens or co-carcinogens, and evaluated whether the DNA damage in human lymphocytes in vitro exposed to binary mixture of metals at low level was additive, synergistic or antagonistic.There were no significant differences of DNA damage between single-exposure and binary mixture of metals on any metal combinations. Therefore, deviations from additivity were not observed. Our results support the hypothesis that individual exposed to mixture of chemicals at low non-toxic dose is additive or less than additive.