Battery toxicity testing

Battery toxicity testing The parallel application of a range of different toxicity... 

EinaHy, the ecotoxicological studies, designed to assess the impact of the substance on the environment, embrace acute toxicity tests to fish and Daphnia, and a battery of tests for the biodegradabiUty of the substance and its biological oxygen demand characteristics. 

By a strict definition, these electrical and electronic wastes are hazardous. Fluorescent lamps contain mercury, and almost all fluorescents fail the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) toxicity test for hazardous wastes. Fluorescent lamp ballasts manufactured in the mid-1980s contain polychorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a carcinogen most of these ballasts are still in service. Batteries can contain any of a number of hazardous materials, including cadmium (nickel-cadmium... 

Federal agencies such as the FDA and EPA require a battery of toxicity tests in laboratory animals to determine an additive s or a pesticide s potential for causing adverse health effects, such as cancer, birth defects, and adverse effects on the nervous system or other organs. Tests are conducted for both short-term (acute) and long-term (chronic) toxicity. For chronic effects other than cancer, laboratory animals are exposed to different doses to determine the level at which no adverse effects occur. This level is divided by an uncertainty or safety factor (usually 100) to account for the uncertainty of extrapolating from laboratory animals to humans and for individual human differences in... 

Typically, ADME studies are included in the battery of tests used to characterize the toxicity of chemicals, as well as other studies designed to trace the underlying molecular and cellular events that lead to toxicity. These studies of toxic mechanisms take many forms, and are better viewed as research studies no general characterization of them will be made here, but some of the things such studies can reveal to aid understanding of risk will be mentioned at appropriate places in the remaining sections of the book. 

Juvonen, R. Martikainen, E. Schultz, E. Joutti, A. Ahtiainen, J. Lehtokari, M. A battery of toxicity tests as indicators of decontamination in composting oily waste. Ecotox. Environ. Safe. 2000, 47, 156-166. 

Kusui, T. Blaise, C. Ecotoxicological assessment of Japanese industrial effluents using a battery of small-scale toxicity tests. In Impact Assessment of Hazardous Aquatic Contaminants Concept and Approaches, Salem, R., Ed. Ann Arbor Press Michigan, USA, 1998 161-181. 

Bernard, C. Persoone, G. CoUn, J. Le Du-Delepierre, A. Estimation of the hazard of landfills through toxicity testing of leachates determination of leachate toxicity with a battery of acute tests. Chemosphere 1996, 33, 2203-2230. 

Neurotoxicity. No histopathological effects on organs and tissues of the neurological systems of animals were found in subchronic and chronic oral studies, but signs of central nervous system toxicity were reported in inhalation, oral, and dermal studies. A battery of tests for neurotoxicity would provide further information of the neurotoxicity in animals, which then might be related to possible neurotoxic effects in humans. 

Pharmacokinetic profiling (ICH-S3B 1995) may prove useful. Review of the battery of genetic toxicity tests ICH-S2B (1997) and the ICH reproduction toxicity guidances (S5A) (1994) and S5B (1996, 2000) are valuable. 

The PMN review process has evolved over time within the constraints set by TSCA. An important constraint is that submitters are required to furnish only test data already in their possession (if any) and are not required to conduct a battery of tests as a precondition for approval. This generalization holds true for basic chemical property data as well as toxicity data, and it is the main reason why TSCA has been such a powerful impetus for developing estimation methods for many of the parameters needed in environmental assessment. To illustrate how extreme the situation is, in one study of more than 8,000 PMNs for class 1 chemical substances (i.e., those for which a specific chemical structure can be drawn) that were received from 1979 through 1990,Lynch et al. (1991) found only 300 that contained any of the property data noted earlier as needed for environmental assessment. The U.S. is unique among industrialized nations in requiring its assessors to work in the virtual absence of test data. 

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