Agrochemicals and veterinary products must undergo numerous toxicological tests before registration. The use of animals in these studies is a controversial issue. The Draize eye irritation test is one of the most criticised methods because of the injuries inflicted on the test animals. Several in vitro methods have been used to investigate the toxicity of potential eye irritants with a view to replacing in vivo eye irritation testing. One of these alternative methods is the Hen's Egg Test--Chorioallantoic Membrane (HET-CAM) test. In the present studies comparative screening was performed with a set of agrochemicals to establish parallel data on in vitro (HET-CAM) and in vivo (Draize) results. The examined materials were: Totril (ioxynil), Omite 57 E (propargit), Actellic 50 EC (pyrimiphos-methyl), Stomp 330 EC (pendimethalin), Mospilan 3 EC (acetamiprid), Alirox 80 EC (EPTC), Match 050 EC (lufenuron), Nonit (dioctyl sulphosuccinate sodium), Perenal (haloxyfop-R methyl ester), Pyrinex 48 EC (chlorpyrifos). These experiments showed good correlation between results obtained by the HET-CAM test and those of the Draize rabbit eye test in most cases. The present form of the HET-CAM test can be proposed as a pre-screening method for the determination of eye irritative potential, therefore the number of test animals can be reduced and/or experimental animals can be replaced.

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