Toxicity study of agrochemicals on chorioallantoic membrane of the egg.

Using animals in toxicological screening is a controversial issue. The Draize eye irritation test is one of the most criticized methods because of the injuries inflicted on the test animals. That's why several various tests have been developed to replace the rabbits in detecting the irritation potential of chemicals. The potential irritancy of compounds may be detected by observing adverse changes which occur in the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) of the egg after to test chemicals. During the test the chemicals are placed directly onto the chorioallantoic membrane. The changes of the vascular injury (haemorrhage, lysis) or coagulation in response to a compound is an indication of the potential of the chemical to damage mucous membranes. The CAM is a complete tissue including arteries, capillaries and veins, and is technically easy to study. It responds to injury with a complete inflammatory reaction, similar to the tissue of the rabbit eye. In our experiment 6 agrochemicals were tested on the chorioallantoic membrane of the hen's egg. In most cases good correlation was found between the HET-CAM results and reported data based on the Draize eye test. The present form of the HET-CAM test can be proposed as a pre-screen method of eye irritation tests, therefore the number of test animals can be reduced.