Dose-Response Assessment for Chemicals That Cause Deterministic Effects

2 Dose-Response Assessment for Chemicals That Cause Deterministic Effects. For hazardous chemicals that cause deterministic effects and exhibit a threshold in the dose-response relationship, the purpose of the dose-response assessment is to identify the dose of a substance below which it is not likely that there will be an adverse response in humans. Establishing dose-response relationships for chemicals that cause deterministic effects has proved to be complex because (1) multiple responses are possible, (2) the dose-response assessment is usually based on data from animal studies, (3) thousands of such chemicals exist, and (4) the availability and quality of data are highly variable. As a consequence, the scientific community has needed to devise and adhere to a number of methods to quantify the most important (low or safe dose) part of the dose-response relationship. 

There are two possible approaches to estimating the human safe dose for chemicals that cause deterministic effects the use of safety and uncertainty factors and mathematical modeling. The former constitutes the traditional approach to dose-response assessment for chemicals that induce deterministic effects. Biologically-based mathematical modeling approaches that more realistically predict the responses to such chemicals, while newer and not used as widely, hold promise to provide better extrapolations of the dose-response relationship below the lowest dose tested. 

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