Rec assay and mutagenicity studies on metal compounds.

Abstract We carried out rec assays on 127 metal compounds with Bacillus subtilis to check their DNA-damaging capacity and mutagenicity. Certain compounds of beryllium, cobalt, cesium, iridium, osmium, platinum, rhodium, antimony, tellurium, thallium and vanadium were newly found to be positive in addition to those of known positive metals such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, mercury, molybdenum and selenium. Reverse mutation assays with Escherichia coli and Salmonella strains showed that compounds of rhodium (RhCl 3 ), tellurium (Na 2 H 4 TeO 6 , Na 2 TeO 3 ) and platinum (PtCl 4 , (NH 4 ) 2 PtCl 6 ) are potent mutagens.