Relations between the averaged 13C nuclear magnetic resonance chemical shift and the carcinogenic activity of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

13C Nuclear magnetic resonance (13C-NMR) spectra were measured for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) to examine the correlation between their chemical shift and carcinogenicity. We confirmed our previous proposition that the carcinogenicity of PAH molecules can be predicted from the value of the averaged 13C-NMR chemical shift. It was also found, using the averaged chemical shift as a parameter, that several quantum chemical indices for the intermediate states of the metabolic transformation are correlated with the carcinogenic activity of PAH. This indicates that the averaged chemical shift can be applied to investigate the metabolic transformation of carcinogenicity.