Bioindicators to detect environmental damage after 'fall out' of pollutants

摘要

Within a project jointly supported by the Italian Ministry of Health and ISPESL (National Authority for Health and Safety at Work), in order to evaluate the environmental damage after an accidental release of toxic substances in the atmosphere or/and soil, a simulation was set up with three substances: Formaldehyde, Fenilisocyanate and Brome. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of the contamination on soil functional qualities and plant nutrition, and to detect DNA damage with shortterm genotoxicity tests performed on polluted soils and on gravitational water. The results showed that some of the parameters considered are applicable indicators for the evaluation of the soil-plant system pollution. Our study demonstrated that the comet assay is a sensitive, rapid and economic technique for he detection of DNA damage, which is ideally suited as a biomarker of genotoxicity for biolnonitoring.