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Issues in Assessing the Health Risks of n-Butanol
Citation:
Segal, D., A. Bale, L. Phillips, A. Sasso, P. Schlosser, C. Starkey, AND S. Makris. Issues in Assessing the Health Risks of n-Butanol. JOURNAL OF APPLIED TOXICOLOGY. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Indianapolis, IN, 40(1):72-86, (2020). https://doi.org/10.1002/jat.3820
Impact/Purpose:
This manuscript presents a case study with n-butanol that illustrates issues that arise when conducting health assessments of chemicals with database limitations.
Description:
A literature review and health effects evaluation were conducted for n-butanol, a chemical that occurs naturally in some foods, which is an intermediate in the production of butyl esters and can be used as a gasoline additive or blend. Studies evaluating n-butyl acetate were included in the review as n-butyl acetate is rapidly converted to n-butanol following multiple routes of exposure. The primary n-butanol health effects identified were developmental and nervous system endpoints. In conducting the literature review and evaluating study findings, the following observations were made: (1) developmental findings were consistently identified; (2) neurodevelopmental findings were inconsistent; (3) evidence for nervous system effects was weak; (4) comparing internal doses from oral and inhalation exposures using physiologically based pharmacokinetic models introduces uncertainties; and (5) a lack of mechanistic information for n-butanol resulted in the reliance on mechanistic data for ethanol, which may or may not be applicable to n-butanol. This paper presents findings from a literature review on the health effects of n-butanol and proposes research to help reduce uncertainty that exists due to database limitations.
