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High Frequency of Micronuclei in Buccal Mucosa of Women Residing Near a Sewage Disposal Drain in Amritsar

Abstract The study was conducted at a village, Mahal, an urban fringe of Amritsar city in North India, located adjacent to main sewage disposal drain, the Tung Dhab drain, of Amritsar. The drain carries largely untreated industrial effluents and Municipal Sewage. The water of Tung Dhab drain and groundwater of village Mahal is hard, more alkaline, has very high bacteriological contents and higher concentrations of heavy metals like Cr, Pb, Ni, and Cd, and comparatively lower level of Zn, Mn and Cu. As the villagers depend entirely on groundwater from shallow hand pumps for their water requirement, the genotoxic effect, if any, of a consistent exposure to polluted water was assessed using buccal mucosal MN assay. 150 women randomly selected from village Mahal had significantly high MN/cell frequency (0.0101±0.006) as compared to 100 age matched controls (0.0013±0.0001) selected from Amritsar city. The MN frequency was higher in women having longer duration (25-45 years) of stay in the village than women having a shorter duration (5-10 years) of stay in the village. The results indicate a DNA damage being caused by a chronic exposure to polluted water having heavy metals.