In order to fully understand potential risk to human beings of exposure to a chemical, one needs to understand the effects of that chemical upon each organ system and to determine its mode of action. For some classes of pesticides their primary mode of toxicity has been established. An example of this is the organophosphorus cholinesterase inhibitors. There is general agreement that their acute lethality and most of their toxicities result from cholinesterase inhibition and subsequent acetylcholine accumulation. Even among this group of compounds, however, there are toxic effects which seem to be due to other actions. For other classes of compounds much less is known of their mechanisms of lethality and effects on organ systems. An example of this is the formamidines, the first useful one of which was chlordimeform. Little information on the mode of action of chlordimeform was available, and on its other effects. This study was initially proposed to determine vascular actions of chlordimeform. The project was expanded to examine the cardiovascular actions of other available formamidines including formamidine metabolites which also retained the formamidine structure.

EPA project officer: Jeffrey Charles. Prepared by University of Oklahoma, Health Sciences Center for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "EPA-600/1-79-031"--Cover. "August 1979"--Cover. "Jeffrey Charles Health Effects Research Laboratory, Environmental Protection Agency"--T.p. Includes bibliographical references.