The results of 9.5 years of official testing of vaccines containing pertussis vaccine, plain or adsorbed with alum, Al(OH)(3), or AlPO(4), are reported. Toxicity was evaluated by weight changes in mice at 3 and 7 days after injection and intercurrent deaths. Toxicity was encountered during the early use of AlPO(4) in pertussis vaccine products, with a special product and quadruple-antigen vacci...

There is growing public pressure to minimize the use of vertebrates in ecotoxicity testing; therefore, effective alternatives to toxicity tests causing suffering are being sought. This report discusses alternatives and differs in some respects from the reports of the other three groups because the primary concern is with harmful effects of chemicals at the level of population and above rather t...

In a two-species toxicity test system survival and reproduction of both the predator Hypoaspis aculeifer (Gamasida) and the prey Folsomia fimetaria (Collembola) were studied after 21 days of residual exposure to a soil contamination of the insecticide dimethoate. Additional experiments were run to analyze which species-species and compound-species relationships determine the outcome of this two...

The acute oral toxicity test seeks to estimate the dose at which 50% of the organisms in adefined population will die (LD50) after exposure to a test material. The statistical basis for the classicstudy design was first described in the 1920s and remained in use until current times. In this test,groups of animals were administered varying doses of test material, and a dosed animal either lived ...

BACKGROUND In this review, the position of behavioural ecotoxicology within the available means to assess the status of marine environments is described as filling the gap for the needed "early warning" signals. A few examples of studies performed since the 1960s are discussed to highlight the sensitivity of these approaches in investigating the effects of chemicals, including priority pollutan...

Every year thousands of new substances are synthetized and marketed. Either by regulatory demands or scientific purposes, these substances should all be tested. The determination of lethal concentration (LC) in a given population after toxicity testing in the laboratory is still the best way to establish and compare toxicity. In this technical note, we propose an R function to estimate LC with ...

Caenorhabditis elegans increasingly is attractive as a toxicity test organism, particularly as a model system to study mechanisms of toxicity at a molecular level and the way that these lead to whole organism and population level effects. Inhibitions of growth, reproduction, movement, and feeding rate all have been proposed as sublethal toxicity endpoints. These endpoints are more sensitive tha...

The no-observed-effect concentrations (NOEC) and EC(10) values for 108 organic compounds were estimated, using multiple endpoints (i.e., biopopulation, growth rate, and dissolved oxygen production), from previous data obtained by a closed-system algal toxicity test (test alga: Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata). These low-toxic-effect concentrations are valuable to risk assessment of chemicals an...

Systemic toxicity caused by repeated exposure to both polar and nonpolar leachables of di(2-ethylhexyl)-1,2-cyclohexane plasticized polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was evaluated with dual routes of parenteral administration method on rats in the study. Experimental group and control group were designed by researchers. Tail intravenous injection with 0.9% sodium chloride injection extracts and intraper...

Tissue engineering is a multidisciplinary field that combines aspects of biology, material sciences, engineering and medicine - the ultimate goal being able to fabricate replacement tissues and/or organs for an ageing population. However, parallel to this milestone, is the exploitation of the biomimetic constructs as feasible alternatives to in vivo/ex vivo toxicity testing models due to their ...