406 TCE
Typical instances requiring medical assistance involve patients who were so
stimulated that they began running vigorously until they collapsed. An intox-
icating dose may produce dizziness and difficulty in moving arms and legs.
Inhaling low levels of TCE can irritate a person’s nose, and presumably higher
amounts would be worse. The vapor may cause eyes to water. Although ex-
periments exposing volunteers to fumes showed little or no adverse effect on
several tests of mental sharpness (and even improvement in some measures,
depending on dosage), persons with industrial exposure to fumes have be-
come peevish and moody, showed trouble maintaining their balance, and ex-
hibited problems with concentration and short-term memory. Numbness,
tingling, or other sensory defects can occur, as can headache, nausea, and low
blood pressure. Brain, liver, kidney, lung, and heart disease have been ob-
served. Respiratory arrest is recorded, as are stroke and coma. Fatal changes
in cardiac rhythm can occur. Heart attack can result from an overdose, but
that is uncommon. A case report tells of chronic exposure causing fatal dam-
age to blood, skin, and internal organs. Autopsy in another instance revealed
liver, kidney, and lung damage in a teenager who died from a TCE overdose.
In addition to sniffing, the chemical can also be absorbed through the skin,
posing a hazard to persons touched by the liquid.
Because TCE liquid will not burn, the substance is often treated as nonflam-
mable. The vapor will burn, however. TCE is used to clean the interior of
space shuttle solid fuel booster casings for relaunch, and a worker was killed
at a cleaning facility when the TCE vapor ignited.
Abuse factors.Tolerance is reported. Dependence can develop in mice.
Withdrawal symptoms in mice can be reduced by dosing them with alcohol,
pentobarbital, ormidazolam. Such cross-tolerance suggests that TCE operates
as a depressant, and humans have experienced depressant actions from it.
Drug interactions.In animal experiments TCE causes fatal cardiac rhythm
trouble that is worsened by alcohol.
Cancer.Laboratory tests indicate TCE might cause cancer, but the com-
pound’s ability to produce the disease in animals and humans is unclear.
Pregnancy.Industrial exposure is suspected of causing fetal abnormality
and spontaneous abortion. One group of experimenters found that chronic
fetal exposure caused heart defects in rats, but another group of researchers
found no effect. Other rodent work has produced birth defects involving
bones. In mice, fetal exposure experiments simulating recreational abuse pat-
terns cause low birth weight along with slower maturation in brains and in
behavior of offspring.
Additional information.Scientific writings occasionally use the abbreviation
“TCE” for trichloroethylene, also called trichlorethylene (CAS RN 79-01-6).
That compound and 1,1,1-trichloroethane are sometimes found in the same
product, but they are different chemicals. Trichloroethylene is not considered
a substance of abuse.
Additional scientific information may be found in:
“Aerosols for Colds.”Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics15 (1973): 86–88.
D’Costa, D.F., and N.P. Gunasekera. “Fatal Cerebral Oedema Following Trichloro-
ethane Abuse.”Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine83 (1990): 533–34.
