Nurşen Başaran, Yalçın Duydu, Aylin Üstündağ, Gökçe Taner, Sevtap Aydin Dilsiz, Hatice Gül Anlar, Can Özgür Yalçin, Merve Bacanli, Klaus Golka, Tanja Schwerdtle, Hermann M. Bolt

• Boron (B) compounds are essential for plants and animals and beneficial for humans in nutritional amounts. I animals and humans increasing evidence have shown beneficial effects on B compounds on nutrition and on antioxidant status. The genotoxic effects of environmental B exposure in women living in boron-rich and boronpoor areas was examined in this study. For this purpose, the DNA damage in the lymphocytes and buccal cells of females were assessed by Comet and micronucleus (MN) assays respectively. No significant difference was observed in the DNA damage of the lymphocytes of B exposed groups of female volunteers in Comet assay. Even buccal micronucleus (MN) frequency observed in the high exposure group was significantly lower than the low exposure group (p < 0.05). The results of this study came to the same conclusions of the previous studies that boron does not induce DNA damage even under extreme exposure conditions.