Effects of air pollution on hsps induction and antibacterial activity in Feijoa sellowiana berg. grown in the “italian triangle of death”-

Anthropic activities have dramatically increased pollution of the biosphere. Use of selected plants to bio-monitor the environmental pollution is one of the most interesting prospective. In the presence of pollutants, plants can undergo biochemical alterations, giving response phenomena. Alterations of the protein or gene or enzymatic pattern have been recently regarded as pollution biomarkers, being early signals of response to environmental stress. Our research group is exploiting some plants to detect the effect of air pollution on the production of antibacterial, allelopathic and antitumoral substances. The urban district of Acerra (Naples, Southern Italy) is one of the vertexes of the “Italian Triangle of Death”, the area in Italy with the highest cancer incidence, probably due to high levels of air pollution (Senior and Mazza 2004). Feijoa sellowiana Berg. (syn. Acca sellowiana) is an evergreen bushy shrub member of Myrtaceae family, native to extreme southern Brazil, northern Argentina, western Paraguay and Uruguay. Different biological activities of F. sellowiana fruits have been reported: antioxidant; antibacterial; cytotoxic; anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer activities on solid and hematological cancer cells. In this study we compare the antibacterial activity on eleven bacterial strains and HSPs induction in fruits from F. sellowiana grown in the district of Acerra with others coming from unpolluted sites. Such methodology could represent a starting point for the development of new biomarkers in air-pollution.