Pollutants, by disrupting metabolic processes, can interfere with development, and, at critical periods of development, can act as teratogens. Such interference with normal development can be used as a bioassay. Some screening tests are based on this phenomenon. As teratogens, pollutants are fairly nonspecific. Many different classes may elicit the same developmental responses. Mechanisms of te...

This review is a a series of the authors' studies designed to test the hypothesis that administration of trichloroethylene (TCE), dichloroethylene (DCE), their metabolites, and related compounds are responsible for fetal cardiac teratogenesis when given to pregnant rats during organogenesis. Identification of teratogenic compounds will allow more accurate assessment of environmental contaminant...

due to the number of new substances coming into use every year and the increasing amounts of chemicals, which are introduced into the environment, there is a high demand for a rapid, reliable and cost-effective method for detection of developmental toxicity. to meet this challenge various in vitro techniques have been established additional to in vivo animal testing. this review introduces the ...

Many chemicals shown to be teratogenic in laboratory animals are not known to be teratogenic in humans. However, it remains to be determined if the unresponsiveness of humans is due to lessened sensitivity, to generally subteratogenic exposure levels, or to the lack of an appropriate means of identifying human teratogens. On the other hand, with the exception of the coumarin anticoagulant drugs...