Health assessment of gasoline and fuel oxygenate vapors: Subchronic inhalation toxicity

•Rat inhalation studies were used to assess the hazard of fuel evaporative emissions.•The toxicity of vapors from gasoline and six oxygenated blends were compared.•The results suggest use of oxygenates are not likely to increase hazard of emissions.

Sprague Dawley rats were exposed via inhalation to vapor condensates of either gasoline or gasoline combined with various fuel oxygenates to assess whether their use in gasoline influences the hazard of evaporative emissions. Test substances included vapor condensates prepared from an EPA described “baseline gasoline” (BGVC), or gasoline combined with methyl tertiary butyl ether (G/MTBE), ethyl t-butyl ether (G/ETBE), t-amyl methyl ether (G/TAME), diisopropyl ether (G/DIPE), ethanol (G/EtOH), or t-butyl alcohol (G/TBA). Target concentrations were 0, 2000, 10,000 or 20,000 mg/m3 and exposures were for 6 h/day, 5 days/week for 13 weeks. A portion of the animals were maintained for a four week recovery period to determine the reversibility of potential adverse effects. Increased kidney weight and light hydrocarbon nephropathy (LHN) were observed in treated male rats in all studies which were reversible or nearly reversible after 4 weeks recovery. LHN is unique to male rats and is not relevant to human toxicity. The no observed effect level (NOAEL) in all studies was 10,000 mg/m3, except for G/MTBE (<2000) and G/TBA (2000). The results provide evidence that use of the studied oxygenates are unlikely to increase the hazard of evaporative emissions during refueling, compared to those from gasoline alone.