Twenty laboratories worldwide participated in a collaborative trial sponsored by the International Pprgram on Chemical Safety on the mutagenicity of complex mixtures as expressed in the Salmonella/microsome assay. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology provided homogeneous reference samples of urban air and diesel particles and a coal tar solution to each participating laboratory, along with samples of benzo(a)pyrene and 1-nitropyrene which served as positive controls. Mutagenic potency was characterized by the slope of the initial linear component of the dose response curve. Analysis of variance revealed significant interlaboratory variation in mutagenic potency, which accounted for 57-96% of the total variance on a logarithmic scale, depending on the sample, strain and activation conditions. No significant differences were noted in the average potency reported for air and diesel particles between laboratories using soxhlet extracts and those using sonication, although there was larger interlaboratory variation for the soxhlet method.