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On the Relationship Between Carcinogenicity and Acute Toxicity
Author(s) -
Metzger Bernhard,
Crouch Edmund,
Wilson Richard
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
risk analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 130
eISSN - 1539-6924
pISSN - 0272-4332
DOI - 10.1111/j.1539-6924.1989.tb01237.x
Subject(s) - carcinogen , artifact (error) , acute toxicity , correlation , toxicology , set (abstract data type) , potency , data set , toxicity , value (mathematics) , positive correlation , chemistry , mathematics , statistics , biology , medicine , computer science , biochemistry , neuroscience , in vitro , geometry , organic chemistry , programming language
Parodi et al. (1) and Zeise et al. (2) found a surprising statistical correlation (or association) between acute toxicity and carcinogenic potency. In order to shed light on the questions of whether or not it is a causal correlation, and whether or not it is a statistical or tautological artifact, we have compared the correlations for the NCI/NTP data set with those for chemicals not in this set. Carcinogenic potencies were taken from the Gold et al. database. We find a weak correlation with an average value of TD 50 /LD 50 = 0.04 for the non‐NCI data set, compared with TD 50 /LD 50 = 0.15 for the NCI data set. We conclude that it is not easy to distinguish types of carcinogens on the basis of whether or not they are acutely toxic.