Alcohol is a prime illustration of this. Alcohol may be good for your health in moderation. However,
Question:
Alcohol is a prime illustration of this. Alcohol may be good for your health in moderation. However, it may be toxic in high amounts.
A physician and alchemist from Switzerland, Paracelsus was active in the 16th century. "The dosage produces the poison," is his most famous quotation. This indicates that the dosage, not the substance, determines whether a chemical is poisonous.
For instance, although water is necessary for life, drinking too much of it may be fatal. The same may be said for oxygen. Although oxygen is necessary for life, too much of it may be harmful.
In other words, the dosage, not the substance, is what makes anything deadly. The appropriate dosage distinguishes a treatment from a poison.
A poison is a drug that is beneficial to you at one dosage but dangerous at another. Alcohol is a prime illustration of this. Alcohol may be good for your health in moderation. However, it may be toxic in high amounts.
The dosage necessary to kill 50% of a population of test animals is known as the LD50, which serves as a gauge of a chemical's toxicity. This knowledge may be helpful in anticipating a chemical's toxicity in people and figuring out the right dosage for human exposure.
LD50 values may be used to examine the relative toxicity of various compounds and can be used to find substances that may be more dangerous than others. With the use of this data, it is possible to evaluate the dangers of exposure to a certain chemical and create safety measures and usage standards.
The margin of safety for a chemical, which is the difference between the dosage that is known to be safe for humans and the dose that is known to be deadly, may also be determined using LD50 values. The chemical is thought to be safer the higher the margin of safety.
When evaluating the dangers connected with a certain chemical, the LD50 should be taken into account with other elements like as the route of exposure and the length of exposure.
No, a substance's near-nontoxicity in a dose/response bio-assay does not imply that it won't be dangerous to living beings. For a firm determination of the compound's toxicity, further tests, such as those on certain organs or systems, may be required.
The dose/response bio-assay is often an excellent place to start when determining the toxicity of a chemical. It should not be the only test performed, however. To get a fuller understanding of the compound's impacts on living things, more testing may be required depending on the substance in issue.
Accounting For Governmental And Nonprofit Entities
ISBN: 9781260118858
19th Edition
Authors: Jacqueline Reck, Suzanne Lowensohn, Daniel Neely