Synthetic and naturally occurring hydrazines as possible cancer causative agents.

The various synthetic substituted hydrazines, which cause tumors in animals, are briefly enumerated. To date, 19 of them have proved to be tumorigenic in animals. A number of these chemicals are found today in the environment, in industry, in agriculture, and in medicine, and the human population is exposed to a certain degree to some of them. Hydrazine also occurs in nature in tobacco and tobacco smoke. The three other naturally occurring hydrazine compounds are N-methyl-N-formylhydrazine, which occurs in the wild edible mushroom, Gyromitra esculenta, and beta-N-[gamma-L(+)-glutamyl]-4-hydroxymethylphenylhydrazine and 4-hydroxymethylphenylhydrazine, which are found in the commonly eaten cultivated mushroom, Agaricus bisporus. Tumorigenesis studies with the naturally occurring hydrazines are in progress.