Correlation of Ocular and Dermal Irritancy of Industrial Chemicals

Seventy-two compounds and mixtures were evaluated by the same personnel, facility, and methods for both skin and eye irritation. The resulting primary dermal irritation indices (PDII) were distributed across the entire range from 0.0 to 5.0, with the exception of two materials with PDIIs greater than 5.0. Severe skin irritation correlated with severe eye irritation in 66 of 72 cases. Skin irritation results failed to predict severe eye irritation in 6 of 72 cases. Mild eye irritation was observed in only one of seven cases in which the test material caused moderate or severe skin irritation Additionally, both the reproducibility of positive and negative control materials in skin irritation studies and the effects of different study design variations on dermal irritation study results were evaluated in a larger data set, which included these 72 materials along with 27 others.