Carbon tetrachloride metabolism in vivo and exhalation of volatile alkanes: dependence upon oxygen partial pressure.

Metabolism of carbon tetrachloride in rats at atmospheric and reduced oxygen pressure has been determined indirectly by its disappearance from the inhaled air; it is inversely related to oxygen concentration and increases with decreasing partial pressure, as expected for reductive dehalogenation; oxygen partial pressure has been reduced to about a third of normobaric conditions. Concurrently exhalation of ethane and pentane as indication of lipid peroxidation has been monitored, showing a drastic increase when the oxygen partial pressure is reduced in the presence of carbon tetrachloride. Time course and duration of these processes indicate that the total metabolism of carbon tetrachloride is limited by the concomitant destruction of cytochrome P-450; also, oxidative destruction of polyunsaturated fatty acids apparently does not proceed beyond the end of metabolic activation of carbon tetrachloride. The molar ratios of the amount of metabolized carbon tetrachloride to the amounts of exhaled hydrocarbons lead to the same conclusion, namely that "lipid peroxidation" in this case does not proceed as an autocatalytic, self-propagating chain reaction.