In Vitro Testing

The goal of effects testing is to find the concentration of an ingredient that makes plants and animals in the environment sick. We do this to make sure our ingredients are well below that concentration in the environment. To avoid the use of animals, we are working on developing in vitro methods. Since organisms are made up of cells, we use cells in effects tests and try to find the concentration that makes cells sick. Hopefully, this concentration is the same as the concentration making the whole organism sick. This research has been ongoing in human health with some limited success.

It is a challenge to use just the cells of one organ to tell us how another organ of the body would respond to a chemical. Further, living organisms are very complex and only function when all the cells of the body are working together. Finally, some organs, like the liver, can take a chemical and change its toxicity or can remove the chemical from the body. These interactions among organs make it difficult to develop one or a few in vitro techniques to provide effects data for one species of fish, much less to provide toxicity data on multiple species of fish and invertebrates. While this task is complex and difficult, the industry is working to develop these methods and reduce animal testing.

Read more about Bioconcentration testing