Mercury levels and neurotoxic potential of house dust extracts

Abstract

The quality of the indoor environment is affected by a set of factors that include, among others, the presence of environmental contaminants. These contaminants are potentially toxic and can negatively affect the health of the inhabitants. Therefore, their study is fundamental, especially considering that in Western societies about 90% of the time is spent inside what has been called the “built environment”. The evaluation of the indoor environment contamination has been increasingly performed using dust. This matrix acts as a reservoir and repository of chemicals that are simultaneously protected from the degradation processes occurring naturally in the external environment. Available studies are mainly based on chemical analyzes that do not allow to evaluate the toxicity in an integrated way, making the implementation of toxicological tests an imperative. In this work, we evaluated the levels of mercury, a well-known neurotoxicant, in house dust extracts collected under the framework of the 6x60x6 case study. The cytotoxic potential of these dust extracts were also analyzed in the dopaminergic neural cell line N27. The obtained results disclose a moderate neurotoxic potential of the different dust extracts analyzed and a statistically significant correlation between cell viability and mercury concentrations (p<0.05, r=0.900).