[In-vitro Evaluation of the Clastogenic Properties of Nitrites and Nitrates]

In vitro culture of peripheral blood lymphocytes has been used to evaluate the ability of nitrates (NaNO3) and nitrites (NaNO2) to produce chromosome aberrations in mammalian cells. Whereas treatment with NaNO3 did not increase the spontaneous yield of aberrations, exposure to high doses of NaNO2 resulted in an low increase of micro-nucleated cells and of chromatid gaps

The mutagenicity of nitrite in the Salmonella/microsome test system.

The bacterial strains of Salmonella typhimurium used for detection of base-pair substitutions (TA1530, TA1535, TA100 and TA102) and various types of frameshift mutations (YG1024, DJ400 and DJ460) were exposed to nitrites in the Salmonella/microsome test system. In agreement with published data, nitrites exhibited mutagenic activity in standard strains TA1530, TA1535 and TA100. The TA102 strain was insensitive as were the frameshift tester strains despite their genetically manipulated genome increasing their sensitivity