Cells are continuously exposed to damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are produced from both endogenous and exogenous sources. 8-Oxodeoxyguanosine (8-oxodG) is an abundant base lesion formed during oxidative stress which, if not repaired, can give rise to G:C-->T:A transversions in DNA. The 8-oxoguanine DNA glycosylase-1 (OGG1)-initiated base excision repair (BER) pathway operates to remove 8-oxodG lesions. Ogg1 deletion and polymorphism may result in a hypermutator phenotype and susceptibility to oxidative pathologies including cancer. Limited and conflicting evidence exists regarding the repair capacity of a prevalent human OGG1 (hOGG1) polymorphism, the Cys326-hOGG1 variant. The formamidopyrimidine DNA glycosylase (FPG)-modified comet assay was used to investigate the ability of sodium dichromate, potassium bromate and Ro19-8022 (+light) to induce DNA damage in mogg1(-/-) null (KO) and wild-type (WT) mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) and to assess hOGG1 variant-initiated BER capacities under conditions of oxidative stress. Treatment of WT MEFs with these pro-oxidant agents induced direct DNA strand breaks in a concentration-dependent manner, whereas, identical treatment of KO MEFs produced no effect. In contrast, KO MEFs accumulated significantly more FPG-sensitive sites than WT MEFs. Expression of hOGG1 in KO MEFs restored the WT phenotype in response to all pro-oxidants tested. The results suggest OGG1-initiated BER generates direct DNA strand breaks detected by the conventional comet assay, thus it is important that researchers do not interpret these as direct damage per se but rather a reflection of the repair process. The data also indicate Cys326-hOGG1-initiated BER is transiently impaired with respect to Ser326-hOGG1 (wild-type)- and Gly326-hOGG1 (artificial)-initiated BER following pro-oxidant treatment, possibly via hOGG1 cysteine 326 oxidation. This finding suggests the homozygous cys326/cys326 genotype may be classified as a biomarker of disease susceptibility, which is in support of a growing body of epidemiological evidence.