Cigarette smoking increases phenacetin O-deethylase (POD) activity in both the liver and placenta in man, but aryl hydrocarbon (benzo[a]pyrene) hydroxylase (AHH) activity is increased only in the placenta. Whilst there was no correlation between hepatic POD and AHH activities (rs = 0.42, P greater than 0.1), there was a highly significant correlation between these two activities in placenta (rs = 0.76, P less than 0.02). On Western blotting of human liver samples with an antibody specific to cytochrome P450IA2 in the rat, only the orthologue of P450IA2 could be detected. This antibody inhibited greater than 70% of hepatic high-affinity POD activity but had no effect on the placental activity. Furafylline, a methylxanthine that acts as a highly specific inhibitor of P450IA2-dependent activities in man, inhibited all of the high-affinity component of POD activity in human liver, but was at least three orders of magnitude less potent an inhibitor of placental POD and of both hepatic and placental AHH activities. As previously shown in the rat, exposure of man to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, present in cigarette smoke, differentially induces P450IA2 in the liver and P450IA1 in extrahepatic tissues, at least in the placenta. Again, as in the rat, POD activity in the liver is catalysed by P450IA2, but in the placenta of women exposed to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in cigarette smoke POD activity is catalysed by another isoenzyme, most likely P450IA1. Thus, tissue-dependent induction and substrate specificity of members of the P450IA family in man, at least in the placenta, appear to be the same as previously shown in the rat.