Vinyl chloride (VC), a known human and rodent carcinogen, is metabolically activated by cytochrome P450 to chloroethylene oxide (CEO), which can rearrange to chloroacetaldehyde (CAA) or undergo hydrolysis. To further understand the roles of CEO and CAA in VC mutagenesis, the types and frequencies of mutations induced at the hypoxanthine (guanine) phosphoribosyl-transferase (hprt) locus were examined in a human B-lymphoblastoid line constitutively expressing human cytochrome P450 2E1 (H2E1 cells). VC was toxic and mutagenic to H2E1 cells as a function of incubation time; exposure to 7.5% VC in air resulted in 75% survival and an hprt mutant frequency of 42 x 10(-6) after 48 h, compared to 5.7 +/- 2.7 x 10(-6) for unexposed cells. The exposure of H2E1 cells to 0.8 to 15.0% VC in air produced similar mutant frequencies without a clear dose-response relationship, suggesting saturation of metabolic activation. Both CEO and CAA exhibited dose-dependent increases in cell killing and mutant frequency in H2E1 cells. Treatment with 16 microM CEO for 24 h resulted in 75% survival and an induced mutant frequency of 23 x 10(-6), while 16 microM CAA produced 5% survival and an induced mutant frequency of 20 x 10(-6). Structural alterations at the hprt locus in independent thioguanine-resistant clones were examined by Southern blot analysis of Pst I-digested DNA with a full-length human hprt cDNA probe. Ten percent (5/50) of VC-induced and 18% (7/38) of CEO-induced mutants showed detectable deletions, compared with 45% (9/20) of CAA-induced mutants. Thus, VC and CEO displayed similar toxicity/mutation profiles and a similar frequency of large deletions, whereas CAA displayed greater toxicity and a larger frequency of deletion mutations. These results suggest that the majority of mutations induced by VC occur through its metabolite, CEO.