Sister-chromatid Exchange Frequency in Women Who Exposed to Biomass in a Village of Central Anatolia

Objective: Biomass fuels are used by most of the people living in the rural areas (wood, agricultural waste and dung are used by about half of the world population) as a major, and most of the time as the only source of domestic energy for cooking and heat­ing. Sister-Chromatid Exchange (SCE) values are analyzed in our study, to determine the mutagenic effects of exposure to biomass fuels.

Design and Patients: Sister-chromatid exchange analysis has been performed on peripheral lymphocytes by conventional sito- genetics method. In this study, two groups as 20 non-smoker sub­jects who are healthy women between 25 and 70 years of age, and have exposed to biomass for ten years, 3-5 hours per day, and 20 healthy women at the same age who did not exposed to biomass fuels were evaluated.

Measurements and Results: The mean SCE frequency was increased significantly in the study group in contrast to the con­trol group in statistical evaluation, which is applied by the Man- Whitney U- test (p<0.05).

Conclusion: We suggest that, our findings support a transient increase in SCE after exposure to biomass fuels and there are con­stant and harmful effects of biomass fuels on increased SCE fre­quency.