In vitro ocular irritation toxicity study of some pesticides

The use of animals in toxicological screening is a controversial issue. The Draize eye irritation test receives particular criticism because of the in juries inflicted on the test animals. In recent years various in vitro meth ods have been developed to replace the heavily criticised Draize rabbit eye test for irritation testing. One of the best-studied alternative methods i s the Hen's Egg Test - Chorioallantoic Membrane (HET-CAM). In the present s tudies comparative screening was performed with a set of pesticides to esta blish parallel data on in vitro (HET-CAM) and in vivo (Draize) results. The tested pesticides included Arelon 500 FW (isoproturon), Banvel 480 (dicamb a), Dikamin D (2,4 D), Karathane LC (dino-cap), Ronstar (oxadiazon) and Mod own 4 F (bifenox). In most cases a good correlation was found between the M ET-CAM assessment and results of the Draize rabbit eye test. Although the c urrent form of the MET-CAM test is a valuable prescreen method for predicti ng the ocular irritation potential of chemicals, and can be used for reduci ng the number of experimental animals, a number of technical problems must still be addressed before these systems can replace whole animal tests. The MET-CAM test can be a useful component of a battery of tests needed for re placing the Draize rabbit eye test.