Uso de Tradescantia pallida para o biomonitoramento de ozônio na cidade de Londrina-PR

Abstract

Ozone is one of the pollutants that most affects vegetation and also human health. Biomonitoring presents itself as a tool to evaluate changes in the environment that cause damage to human beings. The use of plants in biomonitoring has been successfully used to air quality monitors, because it is an easy to use and a low cost method. The present study evaluated the potential indicator of the Tradescantia pallida specie and its applicability in air quality biomonitoring in the city of Londrina-PR using the micronucleous test. This is well-known to evaluate the genotoxic potential of air pollutants in the increasing mutation rate in pollen mother cells of Tradescantia. Inflorescences of the Tradescantia specie were collected at three different locations in the city of Londrina-PR, on two dates (August 27ht, 2016 and September 7th, 2016), which provided material for the preparation of 5 slides with 300 tetrads for analysis. A positive control test was also performed, with branches of T. pallida kept in Formaldehyde (10%), which is known to induce the formation of micronucleous. Although have been observed variations between the values of temperature and atmospheric ozone concentration (in the two collection dates), there was no significant difference between the rates of micronucleous formation in the inflorescences collected at the three sites. The micronucleous formation rate ranged from 0.2 and 1.86%, which represents the spontaneous rate and indicates the absence of exposure of the plants to genotoxic agents. The positive effect of formaldehyde on the micronucleous formation rate was also not observed, probably as a function of the conditions provided in the treatment, with short exposure time to light. Due to the high variability in the determination of micronucleous rates, it is recommended to prepare a larger number of slides for each sampling point.