Risk Assessment

W-3-1

Twana A. Tahir
 Class Content

1. Understanding Toxicity and Dose-exposure Analysis.

2. Computing Dose Intake rate.

3. Uncertainty of Exposure Assessment.

Quantitative Risk Analysis
 A Toxic Word

Toxic means poisonous or dangerous

Toxicology: Is the study of poisons.

Toxicity: is a measure of how dangerous a

chemical is.
 A Toxicity Scale
Signal Words Symbol on
Toxicity Rating
on Package Package

DANGER or
Highly Toxic
POISON

Moderately Toxic WARNING

Slightly Toxic CAUTION

Not Toxic none

How would you rate these products?

Toxicity Rating

Highly Toxic

Moderately Toxic

Slightly Toxic

Not Toxic
And the answers are

Toxicity Rating

Highly Toxic

Moderately Toxic

Slightly Toxic

Not Toxic
 Exposure is

The total amount of a hazard that comes in

direct contact with human body.
 The 3 parts of exposure

The The
The
Source Contact
Environmental
of the hazard (inhaled fumes)
Pathway
(bus exhaust)
(air)
Route #1: Inhalation

Inhalation:

Breathing. When
chemicals enter
the body through
this route of
exposure, they
can get stuck in
the lungs and/or
be taken up into
the bloodstream.
What is dose? X
Exposure X
X

X
X
X X Dose X
X X
X

X X

X = hazard

Dose is the amount of a hazard that actually

enters your body.
 Dose can depend on

Frequency of Body Size:

Duration of
Exposure: How big or small are
Exposure:
How often? you?
How long?

L
M

S S
 Dose & Body Size

Dose can depend on how big or small you are. To

understand how, lets take three different size
flasks and fill them with water. Imagine each one
represents a different human body - one small, one
medium, and one large.

L
M
s s
 A Dose Experiment
Now we will take a dropper of an imaginary
hazardous substance and put 3 drops in
each flask. What will happen? How will
each flask look after the 3 dark purple
drops have been added? s M L
What is a LD50 and LC50?
 Why Rat and Mice are mainly used in
the Toxicology Tests?
1. Rodents are small, easily housed and maintained, and adapt well to
new surroundings.

2. They also reproduce quickly and have a short lifespan of two to

three years, so several generations of mice can be observed in a
relatively short period of time.

3. Also, Their genetic, biological and behavior characteristics closely

resemble those of humans, and many symptoms of human
conditions can be replicated in mice and rats.

4. Rats and mice are mammals that share many processes with
humans and are appropriate for use to answer many research
questions.
 Uncertainty in risk assessment study
Data on Toxic Chemicals usually come from:

1. Laboratory experiments on Animals, not epidemiology studies of humans.

2. These sources data cause problems because:

a. An animal or cell is not a human being

b. Most animals toxicity data is short-term.
c. Relatively high exposure are used experimentally, to cause statistically significant
effects.

3. By contrast, humans are diverse in their response to chemicals due to:

Genetic make up
Age
Habits
Occupation
Health status
diet
 Uncertainty in risk assessment study
When no effect is seen in lab animals, is there negligible risk to
humans exposed at such level?

A 1% incidence of any disease would be impossible to detect in a

study of 25 animals, but would represent more than 2 million cases
if the entire US population were exposed.

Human, in general, have longer life expectancies than most

nonhuman species, metabolize substances differently, and are
exposed to a multitude of different environmental factors over our
lifetimes.
Diseases that develop in people differ in significant ways from
artificially imposed symptoms or in animals that have been
genetically engineered.