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A SEARCH FOR RESIDUAL BEHAVIORAL EFFECTS OF TRICHLOROETHYLENE (TCE) IN RATS EXPOSED AS YOUNG ADULTS
Citation:
Oshiro, W M., Q T. Krantz, AND P J. Bushnell. A SEARCH FOR RESIDUAL BEHAVIORAL EFFECTS OF TRICHLOROETHYLENE (TCE) IN RATS EXPOSED AS YOUNG ADULTS. NEUROTOXICOLOGY AND TERATOLOGY 26:239-251, (2004).
Description:
Trichloroethylene (TCE) is a solvent of concern to the EPA due to its extensive use in industry, its prevalence in urban air, and its appearance in water supplies. Human clinical studies have associated short and long-termsolvent exposures with cognitive dysfunction including attention deficits. Whereasexperiments in both humans and animals have reproduced these cognitive impairments under acute, high level exposures, experiments investigating the residual effects of solvent exposure have been fragmented and contradictory. In this manuscript we utilize a signal detection task that has been demonstrated to quantify attention similarly in humans and animals, and that has been shown to detect attention impairments in rats exposed acutely to solvents including TCE. We exposed rats to high concentrations of TCE (0, 1600 or 2000 ppm) for four weeks, and later tested themfor differences in learning and performance of the task.We found that TCE did not significantly affect learning or attention in these animals, despite significant effects of challenge drugs (ethanol and amphetamine). These results do not support concerns that repeated, high-level exposure to TCE may be associated with persistent cognitive de