Eye irritation responses in rabbit and man after single applications of equal volumes of undiluted model liquid detergent products

A criticism of the use of the rabbit low-volume eye test to determine eye i rritation hazard for man is the lack of comparative data in man and rabbit with undiluted products. To address this, such a study has been performed i n man and rabbit using undiluted model liquid detergents. The hypothesis te sted was that if, under identical test conditions, the effects in the rabbi t were the same or greater than the response in man, then it is valid to us e the low-volume eye test to assess eye irritation hazard for man. The stud ies were carried out using 29 human volunteers and 12 rabbits. The effects in the rabbit were unequivocally greater than the effects observed in man, but clearly less than the expected response from these types of product in the Draize test. The results from this study confirm the sensitivity of the rabbit as a test species, and support the use of the low-volume eye test t o assess eye irritation hazard for man. Any in vitro/ex vivo alternative to assess eye irritation should be developed against the rabbit low-volume ey e test or human data where available. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All ri ghts reserved.