A study was conducted on a group of employees from small scale bidi rolling industries in three different districts of telangana state were tested for comet tail lengths that are well established as indicators of early biological effects. To investigate whether occupational exposure to tobacco dust is genotoxic, a total of 182 women bidi workers and 182 control groups of individuals in the age group of 16 to 65 years and 6-30 yrs of tobacco dust exposure were recruited; a questionnaire based survey was conducted. In the present study, the assessment of Primary DNA damage hosted by peripheral blood leukocytes of workers employed in tobacco based bidi rolling industry was performed using the alkaline comet assay, the tail length and long-tailed nuclei thereby being the primary outcome of the measure. A significant increase in the incidence of DNA damage was observed in the experimental subjects when compared to their respective controls. The processing of tobacco leaves generates a lot of dust and facilitates the release of numerous tobacco components in to ambient air. The results obtained in this investigation indicate that bidi rollers seem to be facing the occupational hazard of genotoxicity due to inhalation and handling of bidi tobacco dust.
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