Suppression of arsenic-induced chromosome mutagenicity by antimony

Arsenic and antimony are two semimetals sharing some chemical as well as toxicological properties. Both elements are clastogenic but not point mutagenic in their trivalent state of valency. Environmental exposure to arsenic was proven to be associated with increased rates of various types of cancers. Antimony is suspected to be carcinogenic to humans. Arsenic and antimony can be found as environmental co-contaminants resulting in co-exposure to man. However, in most regions where arsenic was found in elevated environmental amounts, it was not investigated whether an additional exposure to antimony was predominating. In this study, the chromosome mutagenicity induced by arsenic(III) was significantly suppressed by antimony(III) in the micronucleus test with V79 cells. The results demonstrate the necessity to identify putative environmental co-contaminations of antimony in the regions contaminated with arsenic and to determine the impact of antimony co-exposure on arsenic genotoxicity and carcinogenicity in man in vivo.