title: Strong mutagenic effects of diesel engine emissions using vegetable oil as fuel.
abstract: Diesel engine emissions (DEE) are classified as probably carcinogenic to humans. In recent years every effort was made to reduce DEE and their content of carcinogenic and mutagenic polycyclic aromatic compounds. Since 1995 we observed an appreciable reduction of mutagenicity of DEE driven by reformulated or newly designed fuels in several studies. Recently, the use of rapeseed oil as fuel for diesel engines is rapidly growing among German transportation businesses and agriculture due to economic reasons. We compared the mutagenic effects of DEE from two different batches of rapeseed oil (RSO) with rapeseed methyl ester (RME, biodiesel), natural gas derived synthetic fuel (gas-to-liquid, GTL), and a reference diesel fuel (DF). The test engine was a heavy-duty truck diesel running the European Stationary Cycle. Particulate matter from the exhaust was sampled onto PTFE-coated glass fibre filters and extracted with dichloromethane in a soxhlet apparatus. The gas phase constituents were sampled as condensates. The mutagenicity of the particle extracts and the condensates was tested using the Salmonella typhimurium/mammalian microsome assay with tester strains TA98 and TA100. Compared to DF the two RSO qualities significantly increased the mutagenic effects of the particle extracts by factors of 9.7 up to 59 in tester strain TA98 and of 5.4 up to 22.3 in tester strain TA100, respectively. The condensates of the RSO fuels caused an up to factor 13.5 stronger mutagenicity than the reference fuel. RME extracts had a moderate but significant higher mutagenic response in assays of TA98 with metabolic activation and TA100 without metabolic activation. GTL samples did not differ significantly from DF. In conclusion, the strong increase of mutagenicity using RSO as diesel fuel compared to the reference DF and other fuels causes deep concern on future usage of this biologic resource as a replacement of established diesel fuels.
authors: Research Institute for Occupational Medicine of the Institutions for Statutory Accident Insurance and Prevention (BGFA), Institute of the Ruhr University Bochum, Bürkle-de-la-Camp-Platz 1, 44789 Bochum, Germany. buenger@bgfa.de
authors: Jürgen
authors: J
authors: Bünger
authors: Jürgen
authors: J
authors: Krahl
authors: Axel
authors: A
authors: Munack
authors: Yvonne
authors: Y
authors: Ruschel
authors: Olaf
authors: O
authors: Schröder
authors: Birgit
authors: B
authors: Emmert
authors: Götz
authors: G
authors: Westphal
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Müller
authors: Ernst
authors: E
authors: Hallier
authors: Thomas
authors: T
authors: Brüning
mesh_terms: D004952:Esters / Q000633:toxicity*; D005229:Fatty Acids, Monounsaturated; D005579:Fossil Fuels / Q000633:toxicity*; D005742:Gasoline / Q000633:toxicity*; D009152:Mutagenicity Tests; D009153:Mutagens / Q000633:toxicity*; D010938:Plant Oils / Q000633:toxicity*; D000074262:Rapeseed Oil; D012486:Salmonella typhimurium / Q000187:drug effects / Q000235:genetics; D001335:Vehicle Emissions / Q000633:toxicity*
chemical_list: D004952:Esters; D005229:Fatty Acids, Monounsaturated; D005579:Fossil Fuels; D005742:Gasoline; D009153:Mutagens; D010938:Plant Oils; D000074262:Rapeseed Oil; D001335:Vehicle Emissions