Identification of toxic mineral dusts using mammalian cells

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Abstract
Cell culture systems have been developed to assess the potential pathogenicity of mineral dusts. The in vitro cytotoxicities of a variety of dusts towards mouse peritoneal macrophages, Chinese hamster lung cells (V79 cell line) and human alveolar type II cells (A549 cell line) were investigated.Non-pathogenic dusts were found to be inert in vitro. Fibrogenic non-fibrous dusts such as silica were only cytotoxic towards macrophages. Fibrous dusts which are both fibrogenic and carcinogenic in vivo are cytotoxic towards all three cell types, their cytotoxicity being dependent on fibre size. The size range important for the observed biological effect is longer than about 8 μm and thinner than about 1·5 μm.