Toxicity Profile for Tetraethylene glycol (1993)

Abstract

Tetraethylene glycol was a mild skin and eye irritant in rabbits. A low acute toxicity was recorded in laboratory animals exposed orally or dermally. Poorly reported Soviet studies indicated that repeated oral administration to rats produced testes injury, affected the oestrus cycle, the central nervous system, liver and kidney and produced foetal toxicity and foetal malformations. Tetraethylene glycol was not mutagenic in an Ames bacterial test or in mammalian cells in culture but induced chromosomal damage in mice treated by intraperitoneal injection. In rats treated orally, sperm abnormalities, chromosomal damage in the bone marrow cells and germ cell mutations were reported in Soviet studies, but there was no evidence of chromosomal damage in the bone marrow cells in a Western investigation.