Increasing confidence in waiving dermal toxicity studies: A comparison of oral and dermal acute data with alternative approaches for agrochemicals and products

The refinement of OECD 402 study design and criteria under which the study can be waived has been welcomed in some regulatory regions but met with uncertainty in others. To address these human safety concerns, previously available in vivo acute oral and acute dermal toxicity data was evaluated from a total of 597 agrochemical active ingredients and products. It was identified that all active ingredients and 99.6% of products had an acute dermal classification equal to or less toxic than their acute oral classification, confirming that waiving the acute dermal study and basing the outcome on the acute oral toxicity result has no impact on human health assessment. Additionally, automated Acute Toxicity Estimate (ATE) calculations were conducted on 440 products to evaluate if the predicted dermal toxicity resulted in the same in vivo classification. 93% of ATE predictions provided excellent correlation to the in vivo result and 6.4% resulted in a more conservative prediction. It is therefore clear that the results of this investigation, should remove any regulatory concerns and that OECD 402 can be confidently eliminated in its entirety from testing requirements globally.