Accurate prediction of acute fish toxicity of fragrance chemicals with the RTgill‐W1 cell assay

Abstract Testing for acute fish toxicity is an integral part of the environmental safety assessment of chemicals. A true replacement of primary fish tissue was recently proposed using cell viability in a fish gill cell line (RTgill‐W1) as a means of predicting acute toxicity, showing good predictivity on 35 chemicals. To promote regulatory acceptance, the predictivity and applicability domain of novel tests need to be carefully evaluated on chemicals with existing high‐quality in vivo data. We applied the RTgill‐W1 cell assay to 38 fragrance chemicals with a wide range of both physicochemical properties and median lethal concentration (LC50) values and representing a diverse range of chemistries. A strong correlation ( R 2 = 0.90–0.94) between the logarithmic in vivo LC50 values, based on fish mortality, and the logarithmic in vitro median effect concentration (EC50) values based on cell viability was observed. A leave‐one‐out analysis illustrates a median under‐/overprediction from in vitro EC50 values to in vivo LC50 values by a factor of 1.5. This assay offers a simple, accurate, and reliable alternative to in vivo acute fish toxicity testing for chemicals, presumably acting mainly by a narcotic mode of action. Furthermore, the present study provides validation of the predictivity of the RTgill‐W1 assay on a completely independent set of chemicals that had not been previously tested and indicates that fragrance chemicals are clearly within the applicability domain. Environ Toxicol Chem 2018;37:931–941. © 2017 SETAC