Ozone carcinogenesis revisited.

The question was asked whether ozone would act as a lung carcinogen in mice. To test the hypothesis, female strain A/J mice were exposed for 6 h/day, 5 days/week to 0.12 ppm, 0.5 ppm, or 1.0 ppm of ozone; control animals were kept in filtered air. No ozone-related deaths were observed at any time during the experiment. After 5 months, one-third of the animals were killed. The remaining animals were split into two groups: exposure to ozone continued for one group, whereas the other group was transferred into filtered air. Four months later, these animals were killed. No significant increase in lung tumor multiplicity (average number of tumors per lung) or lung tumor incidence (percentage of tumor-bearing animals) was found in the animals exposed to ozone when compared to animals kept in filtered air, regardless of ozone concentration. Morphometric analysis of lungs of animals exposed to the highest ozone concentration (1.0 ppm) showed a small, statistically not significant increase in centriacinar lesions. It was concluded that ozone is not a lung carcinogen in strain A/J mice at those exposure levels. Moreover, this mouse strain appears to be particularly resistant towards chronic ozone toxicity.