As a series of safety studies on DA-3585, a recombinant human erythropoietin, its local irritancy was examined in rabbits after the following treatments; application into the conjunctival sac of the eye(single), subcutaneous injection (single and -day repeated)and intravenous injection (7-day repeated.)In addition, perivascular irritation of DA-3585 was investigated in mice. In the result of ocular irritation test, 10,000IU/ml solution of DA-3585 could be considered as a non-irritating material. The local irritation of DA-3585 by a single and 7-day repeated subcutaneous injection was negligible and not so much different from that of saline. In the vascular irritancy test, macro-and microscopic observations revealed that local irritation of DA-3585 was comparable to that of saline when injected into retroauricular vein of rabbits for 7 consecutive days. Furthermore the perivascular administration of DA-3585 upto the concentration of 10,000 IU/ml did not induce any morphological abnormalities at injection sites. The results obtained from the present study suggest that the local irritancy of DA-3585 is not different from that of saline when injected through intravenous or subcutaneous route for clinical practice.