Advanced Agent Program: Toxicological Screening Methods.
Abstract
Halon 1211 has been widely used throughout the United States Air Force (USAF) as a streaming agent to extinguish fires. Because it is a depleter of stratospheric ozone, however, its production has been halted. The USAF has been performing research to identify potential replacements. Most 'first-generation' candidates, those chemicals that were readily available and had significant toxicological information, are not as effective as Halon 1211, and many have environmental and toxicological drawbacks. Consequently, the USAF has initiated a search for advanced streaming agents. Technology review have identified promising chemical families; however, many of these have insufficient toxicity information to allow a risk evaluation. Detailed toxicity testing is expensive and time-consuming. This document identifies promising methods for inexpensive screening and ranking of chemical families and chemicals within those families that have potential as Halon 1211 substitutes. These tests include acute toxicity or lethality; hepatoxicity; teratogenicity; cardiac sensitization; and genetic toxicity (mutagenicity). These methods cannot replace whole-animal testing as required by regulatory agencies, but can be used as a screening technique to reduce the cost of testing large numbers of chemicals. A second toxicity screening approach uses Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR) analyses.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1996
- Accession Number
- ADA326439
Entities
People
- Everett W. Heinonen
- Robert E. Tapscott
- Stephanie R. Skaggs