The biological and toxicological activity of gases and vapors

Abstract

A large amount of data on the biological and toxicological activity of gases and vapors has been collected from the literature. Processes include sensory irritation thresholds, the Alarie mouse test, inhalation anesthesia, etc. It is shown that a single equation using only five descriptors (properties of the gases and vapors) plus a set of indicator variables for the given processes can correlate 643 biological and non-lethal toxicological activities of ‘non-reactive’ compounds with a standard deviation of 0.36 log unit. The equation is scaled to sensory irritation thresholds obtained by the procedure of Cometto-Muñiz, and Cain, and provides a general equation for the prediction of sensory irritation thresholds in man. It is suggested that differences in biological/toxicological activity arise primarily from transport from the gas phase to a receptor phase or area, except for odor detection thresholds where interaction with a receptor(s) is important.

Abraham model correlations for solute transfer into 2-ethoxyethanol from water and from the gas phase

“…In these equations, CS,organic and CS,water are the solute's molar solubility in the organic solvent and water, respectively, and CS,gas is a molar gas phase concentration calculable from the solute's vapor pressure. In other published studies SP has referred to the logarithm of the solute's blood-to-body organ/tissue partition coefficient [80][81][82][83][84] and logarithm of the solute's gas-to-body organ/tissue partition coefficient [80][81][82][83][84], median lethal concentration of an organic compound in aquatic toxicity studies [85][86][87], enthalpy of solvation of the solute in water and in organic solvents [88][89][90], biological responses (eye irritation [91,92], nasal pungency [91,93], minimum alveolar concentration on inhalation anesthesia in rats [94], and convulsant activity of gases and vapors [95]) and skin permeation of organic solvents and pharmaceutical compounds from aqueous solution [96,97]. Assembled in Table 3 are the experimental partition coefficients and solubility ratios for a chemically diverse set of 76 solutes dissolved in 2-ethoxyethanol.…”

Partition of compounds from water and from air into amides

“…121 Coefficients for the most up-to-date data 123 are given in Table 6. In addition, we have obtained 124 an equation for inhalation anesthesia on rats for log(1/MAC) where MAC is the minimum alveolar concentration of an inhaled anesthetic that prevents movement in 50% of rats; coefficients are in Table 6.…”

Prediction of Toxicity, Sensory Responses and Biological Responses with the Abraham Model

“…The only other notable structural feature was that convulsants had larger values of L and anesthetics tended to have smaller values of L. Since L is somewhat related to size, the convulsants are generally larger than the inhalation anesthetics. It was pointed out (Abraham et al, 2010c) that a large number of equations on the lines of Eqn. 3 for various biological and toxicological effects of VOCs had been constructed, these equations mainly representing stage 1 in Figure 4.…”