Assessment of skin and eye irritation of 14 products under the stepwise approach of the OECD.

The determination of acute eye and skin irritation is included in international regulatory requirements for the testing of chemicals, because of the possibility of exposure during the production, transport, marketing, and disposal of products. Although there have been some advances in the areas of refinement and reduction, no single battery of tests has emerged as being acceptable as a complete replacement for the conventional Draize rabbit eye and skin irritation tests. Currently, dermal irritation and ocular irritation are generally evaluated in a sequential manner in the context of tiered assessment strategies. In this work, we show how 14 products, mostly designed to be used in agriculture, were evaluated in the Center of Experimental Toxicology of the Center for the Production of Laboratory Animals (Centro Nacional para la Producción de Animales de Laboratorio; CENPALAB) in order to assess their acute dermal and ocular effects. The performed studies include the acute dermal toxicity test, the acute dermal irritation/corrosion test, the hen's egg test-chorioallantoic membrane (HET-CAM) method, and the acute eye irritation/corrosion test. In general, it could be concluded that of the 14 products assessed, none of them showed systemic effects, but local reactions mainly to the eyes. The most significant effects were apparently related to the effects of azadirachtin, an active principle of 2 tested neem derivatives.