Mutagenicity of some Indian commercial alcoholic liquors

Different commercial brands of country liquors from three states of India (Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar) were tested in the Ames test using bacterial strains S. typhimurium TA 98 and TA 100 with and without metabolic activation. The commercial brands tested from Andhra Pradesh were nonmutagenic while those from Maharashtra and Bihar were mutagenic both with and without metabolic activation. Two brands of Maharashtra country liquors were further tested in a mammalian test system and were found to induce significantly higher numbers of micronuclei in Swiss mouse bone marrow cells in a dose-dependent manner.