What's Involved in a Toxicologic Evaluation?
Toxicologic evaluations are conducted to find out whether people are contacting chemicals at levels that can hurt them.
ATSDR has developed the following key steps for conducting a toxicologic evaluation.
Step 1. For each chemical selected for further evaluation, estimate the amount of the chemical that would enter a person’s body (this is called the exposure dose). The estimate is based on how the chemical gets into the body.
Step 2. Compare the estimated exposure doses to health guidelines to determine which exposure doses need more evaluation.
Step 3. Use results of previous studies of humans and animals to judge the likelihood for health effects to result from the specific exposures investigated.
Page last reviewed: May 31, 2016
Content source: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry