ABSTRACT
To safeguard public health, methodologies are needed that are more sensitive than human epidemiological studies and that can be applied to any and all chemicals of concern. The most useful methodology for assessing human health risk is toxicity testing in small mammals. Basing human health-risk assessment on animal data is biologically plausible, because we are closely related to other mammals in evolutionary terms, and we generally respond similarly, although not identically, to toxic chemicals. Given our biological similarities, toxicity data in small mammals can be extrapolated to humans with a reasonable degree of confidence and used as a basis for human health-risk assessments (Chapter 8).
