Background: A combination of several factors including a change in the paint application system; a lack of proper hygiene; and inadequate safety measures caused a severe health impact in the workers of some textile painting factories. This outbreak, mainly characterized by respiratory disorders, caused the death of six people and it has been classified as Ardystil syndrome.
Materials and methods: Fifty-two workers involved in the outbreak and 48 healthy subjects not known to have exposed to the potentially mutagenic agents participated in the study. The program evaluated possible genotoxic damage through the sister chromatid exchange (SCE) cytogenetic biomarker assay. We determined the frequency of SCE, high-frequency cells (HFCs), and a ratio, which can be considered as a new parameter, allowing for the study of the SCE distribution pattern among the chromosomes.
Results: There was no statistically significant difference in the SCE frequency and in the mean number of HFCs between the control and the Ardystil-affected groups. However, smoking increased the incidence of all parameters studied in both the case and control groups.
Conclusions: This study shows that workers involved in the Ardystil syndrome did not suffer genotoxic damage as measured by SCE and HFCs when compared with the control group.