• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• 제12권3호
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• pp.27-35
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• 2010

In this study, we have developed the database of safety and health information for pesticide active ingredients used in Korea. There were 1,283 pesticide items among which 296 were found to be out of use in current. A total of 349 pesticide ingredients were being used in Korea. The database consists of 32 types of information including chemical characteristics, acute toxicity, chronic toxicity (carcinogenic and reproductive toxicity), specific symptoms by exposure route and first aid. When pesticide ingredients were assessed in terms of key properties such as color, odor, acute toxicity, carcinogenic and reproductive toxicity, they were white, colorless and odorless, in general. When ingredients were classified by category of acute toxicity, 'Non-hazardous' represented 29%, followed by 'Slightly hazardous' at 16%, 'Moderately hazardous' at 14%, 'Highly hazardous' at 5%, and 'Extremely hazardous' at 2%. 85 out of 349, or 24% of ingredients were found to be possibly carcinogenic to human. This database is expected to provide an easy access for farmers, agriculture supervisors, researchers and consumers, and it can ultimately be used as basic data on farmer's safety and health.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• 제44권1호
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• pp.31-43
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• 2018

Objectives: Effective genetic toxicology and molecular biology research techniques and strategies that are highly correlated with the carcinogenic inhalation toxicity test and related research are required. The aim of this study was to maximize the utilization of chemical substances to prevent workers' occupational diseases. Methods: We surveyed the literature, domestic and international references, and the status of relevant domestic and foreign professional organizations. Expert advisory opinions were reflected, and experts were consulted by participating in domestic and overseas academic conferences. Results: The current status of domestic and international genotoxic toxicity evaluation was examined through various documents from related organizations. Cell models for in vitro lung toxicology were investigated and summarized, and the human resources and performance results of genetic toxicity studies and pilot projects were compared and analyzed by holding an advisory meeting. We examined domestic and international genotoxicity guidelines and investigated new test methods for the development of genotoxicity and carcinogenicity. Ultimately, we described long-term future predictions, including the implementation of our researchers' recommendations and occupational genetic toxicology forecasts for future worker health protection. Conclusions: This research project aims to establish current genetic toxicology and molecular biology research techniques and strategies that can maximize the linkage with the carcinogenic inhalation toxicity test and research in the future. We expanded the study of genetic toxicity and establish a foundation forgenetic toxicity in accordance with research trends in Korea and abroad.

• Toxicological Research
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• 제30권3호
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• pp.179-184
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• 2014

Xenobiotics causing a variety of toxicity in biological systems could be classified as two types, inorganic and organic chemicals. It is estimated that the organic xenobiotics are responsible for approximately 80~90% of chemical-induced toxicity in human population. In the class for toxicology, we have encountered some difficulties in explaining the mechanisms of toxicity caused especially by organic chemicals. Here, a simple flowchart was introduced for explaining the mechanism of toxicity caused by organic xenobiotics, as the central dogma of molecular biology. This flowchart, referred to as a central dogma, was described based on a view of various aspects as follows: direct-acting chemicals vs. indirect-acting chemicals, cytochrome P450-dependent vs. cytochrome P450-independent biotransformation, reactive intermediates, reactivation, toxicokinetics vs. toxicodynamics, and reversibility vs. irreversibility. Thus, the primary objective of this flowchart is to help better understanding of the organic xenobiotics-induced toxic mechanisms, providing a major pathway for toxicity occurring in biological systems.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• 제2권2호
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• pp.161-172
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• 1994

This study was conducted to examine DA-3002, a biosynthetic human growth hormone, for its acute and subacute toxicities in mice and rats. The drug was administered subcutaneously and orally at a dose level of 1.0, 3.0, 8.9, 26.7 or 80.0 lU/kg once for single dose toxicity and given subcutaneously at a dose level of 0.34, 1.7 or 8.4 lU/kg daily for 13 weeks to investigate repeated dose toxicity. In the acute toxicity study, doses up to 80 lU/kg had no adverse effect on the behavior or body weight gain. Pathological examinations revealed no abnormal changes which could be attributed to toxic effect of DA-3002. In the subacute toxicity study, the growth hormone was tolerated well in broth mice and rats. No drug related deaths occurred and all animals appeared to be normal throughout the dosing period. Increases in body weight gain, food utilisation and absolute organ weights were observed in the rats in the high dose group. Mild changes in the blood chemical parameters were also seen in the treated groups. Histopathologically, however, no abnormal changes were observed in any organ. The changes noted during the treatment periods presumably represent exaggerated pharmacological effects of the growth hormone, and no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) was considered to be more than 8.4 lu/kg/day.

• Toxicological Research
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• 제17권3호
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• pp.195-201
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• 2001

The OECD acute toxicity guideline has been revised recently to protect animal welfare. The GLP authority of the Ministry of Environment, the National Institute for Environmental Research, recommended GLP laboratories in Korea to ufo the revised acute toxicity guideline. This study was carried out to optimize newly adopted OECD test guideline 420 (TG 420). Bisphenol A was selected for test chemical. Following TG420, Bisphenol A was classified as class 5/unclassified group. The revised TG 420 was very effective test in minimizing animal number and classifying chemicals. The method, however had short-coming in evaluation of test results statistically because the test had no control group, and the test should be stopped when animals were dead at the lowest dose or alive at the highest dose. TG 420 required at Least 20 animals to complete the test, but it could result in producing unused animals that need to sacrifice.

• International Journal of Stem Cells
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• 제17권2호
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• pp.141-146
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• 2024

Recent advancements in organoid technology have led to a vigorous movement towards utilizing it as a substitute for animal experiments. Organoid technology offers versatile applications, particularly in toxicity testing of pharmaceuticals or chemical substances. However, for the practical use in toxicity testing, minimal guidance is required to ensure reliability and relevance. This paper aims to provide minimal guidelines for practical uses of kidney organoids derived from human pluripotent stem cells as a toxicity evaluation model in vitro.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• 제20권4호통권51호
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• pp.311-325
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• 2005

A chemical ranking and scoring system, CRS - Korea, has recently been developed and proposed to use to prioritize on a screening level the toxic chemicals for monitoring and risk assessment. As CRS-Korea requires rigorous assessments prior to its wide application, an assessment was conducted in this study by examining the contribution of individual parameter score to the final chemical score or ranking. The sensitivity of the system to the default values for various parameters of missing data was also tested. The chemical ranking/score was round to depend primarily on the score of a single parameter, i. e., the chemical release, while toxicity scores show little correlation with the priority Further analysis indicated that the dominating effect of the chemical release results from i) its multiplicative relationship with the other two exposure parameters (biodegradation and persistent) and ii) the fact that a maximum score of 10 was assigned to the chemical release parameter while 5 was assigned for all others. AE the fraction of the data that are missing exceeded $70\%$ for various toxicity parameters at compared to less than $10\%$ for exposure parameters, the sensitivity of the ranking to the default value was not significant (rank correlation coefficient = 0.98) for toxicity parameters. Bated on this assessment, an improved CRS system (CRS - Korea II) was proposed in which the impact of the chemical release was properly adjusted by changing the multiplicative relationship to additive one and the maximum score to 5. Chemical priority was derived for each of 16 provinces by using CRS-Korea II. The chemical priority was found to significantly vary among the provinces. It was concluded that not only the national chemical priority but the local chemical priority should be taken into account in setting the nationwide chemical monitoring and risk assessment strategy.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• 제22권1호
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• pp.27-36
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• 2007

Cyanides and dichlorophenols were important pollutants in industrial effluents of steel, petroleum, plastics, pesticides, synthetic dye and/or fiber manufacturing. The toxic effects of cyanide and 3, 5-dichlorophenol in the unary and binary solutions to Vibrio fischeri were determined using the newly developed $N-tox^{(R)}$ bioassay system. This bioassay system relies upon the attenuation of light intensity emitted by Vibrio fischeri exposed to various pollutants including metals and organic compounds. Most of studies dealing with toxicity of pollutants concerned single chemical species, while the organisms were typically exposed to pollutant mixtures. The present study showed that the toxicity of some binary combinations of cyanide and 3, 5-dichlorophenol significantly was lower than the predicted toxicity from the addicted model. This antagonistic interaction was well explained by chemical interaction model presented in this study.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• 제29권
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• pp.8.1-8.8
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• 2014

Objectives An ecofriendly alternative to chemical pesticides is bio-pesticides, which are derived from natural sources. The interest in bio-pesticides is based on the disadvantages associated with chemical pesticides. Methods We conducted acute toxicity assessments of camphor, a major component of bio-pesticides, by using Daphnia magna (D. magna) as well as assessed the morphological abnormalities that occurred in Danio rerio (D. rerio) embryos. Results The median effective concentration of camphor on D. magna after 48 hours was $395.0{\mu}M$, and the median lethal concentration on D. rerio embryos after 96 hours was $838.6{\mu}M$. The no observed effect concentration and predicted no effect concentration of camphor on D. magna, which was more sensitive than D. rerio, were calculated as $55.2{\mu}M$ and $3.95{\mu}M$, respectively. Morphological abnormalities in D. rerio embryos exposed to camphor increased over time. Coagulation, delayed hatching, yolk sac edema, pericardial edema, and pigmentation of embryos mainly appeared between 24 and 48 hours. Further, symptoms of scoliosis and head edema occurred after 72 hours. In addition, bent tails, ocular defects and collapsed symptoms of fertilized embryonic tissue were observed after 96 hours. Conclusions The camphor toxicity results suggest that continuous observations on the ecosystem are necessary to monitor toxicity in areas where biological pesticides containing camphor are sprayed.

• Toxicological Research
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• 제32권4호
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• pp.337-343
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• 2016

We determined the toxicity of mixtures of ethyl acetate (EA), isopropyl alcohol (IPA), methyl ethyl ketone (MEK), toluene (TOL) and xylene (XYL) with half-maximal effective concentration ($EC_{50}$) values obtained using human hepatocytes cells. According to these data, quantitative property-activity relationships (QPAR) models were successfully proposed to predict the toxicity of mixtures by multiple linear regressions (MLR). The leave-one-out cross validation method was used to find the best subsets of descriptors in the learning methods. Significant differences in physico-chemical properties such as boiling point (BP), specific gravity (SG), Reid vapor pressure (rVP) and flash point (FP) were observed between the single substances and the mixtures. The $EC_{50}$ of the mixture of EA and IPA was significantly lower than that of contained TOL and XYL. The mixture toxicity was related to the mixing ratio of MEK, TOL and XYL (MLR equation $EC_{50}=3.3081-2.5018{\times}TOL-3.2595{\times}XYL-12.6596{\times}MEK{\times}XYL$), as well as to BP, SG, VP and FP (MLR equation $EC_{50}=1.3424+6.2250{\times}FP-7.1198{\times}SG{\times}FP-0.03013{\times}rVP{\times}FP$). These results suggest that QPAR-based models could accurately predict the toxicity of polar and nonpolar mixtures used in rotogravure printing industries.