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Abstract
The increasingly large number of chemicals introduced onto the market and into the
environment has necessitated the monitoring of environmental materials and specimen
banking, as well as the development of rapid and reliable methods for the evaluation
of toxicity. The Hen's Egg Test, or Hühner-Embryonen-Test (HET) is a rapid, sensitive
and inexpensive toxicity test and can give information on embryotoxicity, teratogenicity,
systemic and immunopathological effects, metabolic pathways and now, in developed
form, on mucous-membrane irritation potencies of chemical substances. Testing with
incubated hen's eggs is a borderline case between in vivo and in vitro systems and
does not conflict with ethical and legal obligations especially animal protection
laws. In the special field of mucous-membrane irritation testing, a specific score
and classification scheme was developed for the HET, which allows risk assessments
analogous to the Draize scheme. There is a good correlation between the results for
HET tests on a variety of pyrithiones, phenols and isothiazolinones, and the corresponding
data based on Draize tests. HET chorioallantoic membrane testing should and could
not entirely replace current irritation tests in mammals, but it can diminish the
number of investigations with mammals, as well as limit or eliminate pain and injury
during animal experiments and allow regulators to set priority and toxicity categories.