Jump to main content.


Acute Oral Toxicity (AOT) Up-And-Down-Procedure

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view some of the files on this page. See EPA's PDF page to learn more.

The files listed below include the program and associated documentation for conducting the Up-and-Down Procedure, an alternative acute toxicity test that provides a way to determine the toxicity of chemicals with fewer test animals by using sequential dosing steps.  

The up-and-down method is used in the Series 870 Health Effects Test Guidelines for acute toxicity testing and by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member nations.  It replaces the traditional acute oral toxicity test formerly used to characterize industrial chemicals, pesticides, and their mixtures. This method maintains the performance of acute testing for applications that use the median lethal dose (classic LD50) test while achieving significant reductions in animal use. It uses sequential dosing, together with sophisticated computer-assisted computational methods during the execution and calculation phases of the test.

Publications | Glossary | A-Z Index | Jobs


Local Navigation


Jump to main content.