author(s)
Sonu Ambwani, Tanuj Kumar Ambwani and Ramswaroop Singh Chauhan

abstract
Chemical pesticides have become an integral part of modern agriculture industry though not without deleterious effects on human/ animals health. Captan is a commonly used fungicide belonging to the chemical group sulfenimide. There are reports indicating its inhibitory role in cellular DNA synthesis in herring sperm DNA and human cellular DNA, suggesting a possible mutagenic consequence. It was surprising to note that, though captan is a popular fungicide in use since early sixties, practically no information is available on in vitro immunotoxic effects of captan. Present communication reports oxidative stress and immunotoxic effects of low level dose of captan on chicken lymphocytes cell culture system using nitric oxide estimation and Lymphocyte proliferation assay. Captan treatment led to enhanced oxidative stress on estimating the nitric oxide level. It also displayed a significant decrease in B and T cell blastogenesis in comparison to control cells and thus found to be immunotoxic even at low level .