Read-across estimates of aquatic toxicity for selected fragrances

Abstract

Read-across as a non-animal testing alternative for the generation of risk assessment data can be useful in those cases where quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models are not available, or are less well developed. This paper provides read-across case studies for the estimation of the aquatic toxicity of five different fragrance substances, and proposes a pragmatic approach for expressing uncertainty in read-across estimates. The aquatic toxicity estimates and their uncertainties are subsequently used to estimate fresh water compartment Predicted No-Effect Concentrations (PNECs), with their two-sided 90% Confidence Intervals (CIs). These PNECs can be used directly in risk assessment. The results of the musk fragrance read-across cases (musk xylene, musk ketone and galaxolide) are compared to experimentally derived PNEC values. The read-across estimates made by using similarity in a hypothesised mechanism of action for (acute) toxicity of musk xylene gave a PNEC of 2μg/L (90% CI 0.0004-13.5μg/L) with the Species Sensitivity Distribution (SSD) approach. This estimated value is 1.8 times above the experimentally-based fresh water PNEC of 1.1μg/L. For musk ketone and galaxolide, the PNEC values based on the SSD approach and employing a toxicity mechanism-based read-across were 2.0 times greater, and 4.9 times below the experimentally derived PNEC values, respectively.