Two different types of liquid detergents for kitchin use, one of which contains linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS) and another contains sodium alkyl ethoxy sulfate (AES) and polyoxyethylene alkyl ether (POEAE) as their main constituents, were examined for potential teratogenic and embryotoxic activity following percutaneous or subcutaneous administration.In the dermal application, both detergents were diluted with water as 0.5, 5, and 15% solutions. Each solution of the detergents was applied on the shaved dorsa of pregnant mice, once daily at dose of 0.5ml per mouse during pregnancy days 1-13 in LAS detergent and 0-13 in AES-POEAE detergent.In the subcutaneous administration, the detergent containing LAS was given once daily at doses of 30 and 150mg/kg during days 7-13 or 0-13 of pregnancy, and the detergent containing AES and POEAE was dosed once daily at doses of 5, 50, and 500mg/kg during days 7-13 of pregnancy.A slight reduction of pregnancy rate was observed only in the group treated dermally with 15% solution of the detergent containing LAS, but there were no significant differences between the values of the group and the control. No deleterious effects were noted on embryonic development in either treatment of both detergents. Some kinds of external anomalies were found in all groups with slightly higher incidences than the reported data on the incidence of spontaneous external anomalies in the ICR-JCL strain of mice, but the incidences of anomalous fetuses in the treated groups were not significantly different from those in controls. In all experiments, on fetuses with internal anomalies were found in all groups except only one case in the group treated with 150mg/kg LAS detergent. Some kinds of skeletal variations with low or considerably high frequency occured in all groups, but there were no statistical differences among the groups.In the subcutaneous studies, the numbers of fetuses with skeletal anomalies were not significantly increased in the treated groups as compared to the controls.The results of this study would suggest that there was no conclusive evidence of embryotoxic and teratogenic effects, assumed to be attributable to these detergents, in the mice.
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