Pentachlorophenol mammals

Table 23.6 Effects of Pentachlorophenol on Selected Mammals Organism, Dose,...

Pentachlorophenol is toxic to mammals. Its acute oral ld, for rats is 210 mg/kg. It irritates mucous membranes and causes skin irritation. It is extremely toxic to fish, the LCjo (48 h) for rainbow and brown trout is 0.17 mg sodium pentachlorophe-noxide (Alabaster, 1958). 

The decomposition of benzene and naphthalene and its homologues by microorganisms has already been discussed earlier. The metabolizing mechanisms of naphthalenes in fish have been well studied [47, 49]. Decomposition products of chlorobenzene in daphnia, mosquitos, snails and fishes are the polar compounds chlorophenol and chloro-o-dihydroxybenzene amongst other compounds, those of nitrobenzene aniline, acetanilide, aminophenols and nitrophenols and those of hexachlorobenzene pentachlorophenol and unknown compounds [71]. Bromoben-zene is deactivated to the toxic bromophenol [217]. In the case of man and land mammals, studies have concentrated on the metabolism of benzene, toluene, xylenes and styrene, which are also significant in occupational medicine [12, 13, 136, 195, 196, 215-217], A comparison of the metabolism of benzene into phenol in various animal species with the aid of microsomal preparations of the lungs or liver yielded vast differences. However, it is possible for benzene, in part, to inhibit or prevent its own metabolism [218]. 

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