Developmental toxicity and structure/activity correlates of glycols and glycol ethers

In recent years, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) has selected numerous glycol ethers for testing in routine laboratory mammals to ascertain the magnitude of their ability to injure the conceptus. From the lists available of ongoing and projected NTP test chemicals, a series of glycol ethers was selected for examination in vitro in the hydra assay. Also tested were additional chemicals of similar molecular configuration and/or composition. This short-term screening test placed the 14 glycols and glycol ethers tested into a rank order sequence according to their degree of hazard potential to developmental biology, i.e., their ability to interfere with the developmental events characteristic of all ontogenic systems. They were ranked according to the difference between the lowest dose or concentration overtly toxic to adults (A) and the lowest concentration interfering with development (D) of the artificial embryo of reaggregated adult hydra cells and the A/D ratio. Published data from mammalian studies were available for a few of the test chemicals, and in each instance the hydra assay was in direct agreement with the outcomes reported of the more elaborate and standard animal tests. Ethylene glycol and ethylene glycol monomethyl ether were shown by both standard evaluations in mammals, and by the hydra assay, to disrupt embryos only at or very near to their respective adult toxic doses, whereas the mono-ethyl ether perturbed development at approximately one-fifth of the lowest dose overtly toxic to adults.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)