Toxicological Effect of Acute Exposure of Sulfur Dioxide on Buccal Mucosa of Mus Musculus

Exposure to toxic gas emissions from industries or other sources represents an important cause of negative effects on the health of living organisms. The objective of this work is to detect the possible cytotoxic or genotoxic effect on mice exposed to SO2 gases, so we implemented a system with an airtight chamber where BALB/c mice were located, distributed into control (air) and treatment (air-SO2) groups exposed to a constant flow of air-SO2 at concentrations of 0, 200, 250, 300 and 350 µg/m3 of SO2 at 27°C continuous in 72 hours. Through microscopic observation (1000X), oral mucosa epithelial cells stained with May-Grunwald Giemsa were examined. A statistical analysis was performed using ANOVA with Tukey's post hoc test and the SPSS 21.0 program. The results (mean ± SD) showed significant differences between the different treatment groups respect to the control. It was also an increase in the percentage of cells with cytotoxicity (18.09 ± 4.43 and 45.85 ± 2.74 of 250 and 300 µg/m3 of SO2 respectively vs. 11.65 ± 4.45 of the control) and genotoxicity was observed (16.07 ± 6.25 and 18.03 ± 1.34 of 250 and 300 µg/m3 of SO2 vs. 10.85 ± 3.50 of the control). Therefore, it is concluded that increase cytotoxic and genotoxic index at these SO2 values