Advanced Agent Program: Toxicological Screening Methods

摘要

Halon 1211 has been widely used throughout the United States Air Force (USAF) asa streaming agent to extinguish fires. The USAF has been performing research to identify potential replacements. This document identifies promising methods for inexpensive screening and ranking of chemical families and chemicals within those families that have potential as Halon 1211 substitutes. These tests include acute toxicity or lethality; hepatoxicity; teratogenicity; cardiac sensitization; and genetic toxicity (mutagenicity). These methods cannot replace whole-animal testing as required by regulatory agencies, but can be used as a screening technique to reduce the cost of testing large numbers of chemicals. A second toxicity screening approach uses Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR) analyses.