US EPA

73487 

Journal Article 

Chromosome aberrations in lymphocytes of workers exposed to styrene 

Meretoja, T; Jarventaus, H; Sorsa, M; Vainio, H 

1978 

1 

Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health
ISSN: 0355-3140
EISSN: 1795-990X 

SCAND J WORK ENV HEALTH 

HELSINKI 

2 

259-264 

English 

734413 

WOS:A1978GD05000034 

Workers exposed to styrene in the reinforced plastics industry show a significant increase of chromosome aberrations, mainly chromosome breaks, in peripheral blood lymphocytes. The high incidence of aberrant lymphocytes (mean 15.1 ± 4.8%; referents 2.0 ± 1.3%) was retained when the same men were reexamined one year later (mean 16.2 ± 2.9 %) However, the frequency of sister chromatid exchanges (SCE), a newly developed sensitive parameter for the detection of recombinational exchanges linked with DNA repair, was not significantly increased (mean 5.3 ± 1.0 SCE/cell) in comparison to the referents (mean 4.4 ± 0.6 SCE/cell. This finding suggests a specific role of styrene or its metabolites in inducing genetic lesions mainly manifesting themselves as chromosomal breaks.