What are the facts of the bioassay research?
As part of its commitment to the safe use of silicone, Dow Corning commissioned a two year Combined Chronic/Carcinogenicity Study on D5 liquid silicone. What is important to understand is that the bioassay study was designed to test the potential effects of D5 as a chemical, not the safety of its use in GreenEarth’s dry cleaning application. In the GreenEarth Cleaning process, silicone is kept inside the machine and continuously recycled within the machine using a closed loop system. The bioassay research tested the effects of chronic inhalation of D5 at various levels of exposure for varying lengths of time, on male and female lab rats. A small but statistically significant number of female rats exposed at the highest possible exposure level for the longest possible time developed pre-cancerous indicators (they did not develop cancer). The rats affected in the study were the female rats exposed to the highest achievable vapor concentration of D5, 160 parts per million (ppm), six hours
