Toxicity of phenol causes, prevention and treatment

When phenol is dumped into river water, it is very toxic to aquatic fauna and lethal at a concentration of 1 ppm. The genuine toxicity of phenol and the almost apocalyptic descriptions of its side-effects, which can even lead to death by cardiovascular collapse, severely limited its cosmetic use imtil the second half of the 1990s, especially in Europe. English-language publications, for their part, state that, even so, a phenol peel is one of the most frequently used techniques in the treatment of photoaging .  

As we have seen in Chapter 27, phenol is rapidly absorbed by the skin and mucous membranes. It is also rapidly eliminated by the lungs in the form of water and carbon dioxide and by the kidneys in free form and in sulfate- and glucuronide-conjugated form. Deto3dfication starts immediately after phenol has been applied.  

In rats, the oral LD50 is 530 mg/kg. In rabbits, 70% of the phenol applied to the skin is absorbed in 30 minutes and 99% within 24 hours. In 1944, Deichmann and Witherup published the results of their experiments on the toxicity of phenol in laboratory animals. 

Their conclusions were as follows the rate of absorption of phenol/skin surface unit is not closely dependent on the 

There are many pharmaceutical products widely used in medicine and dentistry that contain phenol, sometimes in fairly high concentrations. Bonain s local anesthetic mixture, combining menthol, cocaine and phenol, is well known, and is used, for example, as an intranasal analgesic treatment for certain facial pains. Other products containing phenol include hemorrhoid creams, chilblain solutions, ear drops or wax remover drops, psoriasis treatments, and mouth sprays with phenol in concentrations ranging from 3 mg/ml to 50 mg/g. Applying these products locally introduces only a small quantity of phenol into the organism at well-spaced intervals, and does not appear to cause intoxication. 

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