What is toxicology?

The name toxicology is derived from the Greek word "TOXIKON", which means an arrow. Modern toxicology is defined as a study on the adverse (toxic) effects of both chemical and physical agents on biological systems. An important goal of toxicology is the application of the discipline to safety evaluation and risk assessment.

According to Paracelsus (1493 - 1541) "All substances are poisons; there is none which is not poison. The right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy."

Toxicology has a broad scope. It deals with toxicity and mechanisms of toxicity of chemicals used in medicine for diagnostic, preventive, and therapeutic purposes, in the food industry as direct and indirect additives, in agriculture as pesticides, growth regulators, artificial pollinators, and in the chemical industry as solvents, components, and intermediates of plastics and many other types of chemicals. It also concerned with the health effects of metals, petroleum products, wastes of paper and pulp industry, air pollutants, and animal and plant toxins. Risk assessment of deleterious of health effects induced by chemicals is a major enterprise in toxicology.

Many of the problems in toxicology require an integrative approach to problem solving. Therefore, toxicologists use a variety of approaches that span several of these areas to obtain a comprehensive picture of the risks associated with chemicals under investigation. These fields include: Biochemical toxicology, Toxicokinetics, Chemical carcinogenesis, Genetic toxicology, Developmental toxicology, Reproductive toxicology, Neurotoxicology, Immunotoxicology and Ecotoxicology.

In addition to these fields of study, there are several other areas of toxicology e.g. Regulatory toxicology (risk assessment/risk management), Clinical toxicology, Forensic toxicology, Occupational toxicology, and Ecotoxicology. These fields of toxicology overlap partly with the areas determined above.

Toxicology is an integral component of risk assessment which utilizes the data obtained from toxicological studies to establish regulatory policy regarding exposure to potentially hazardous substances.