Reference dose
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A reference dose is the United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) maximum acceptable oral dose of a toxic substance, "below which no adverse noncancer health effects should result from a lifetime of exposure". Reference doses have been most commonly determined for pesticides. The EPA defines an oral reference dose (abbreviated RfD) as: [A]n estimate, with uncertainty spanning perhaps an order of magnitude, of a daily oral exposure to the human population (including sensitive subgroups) that is likely to be without an appreciable risk of deleterious effects during a lifetime.
A reference dose is the United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) maximum acceptable oral dose of a toxic substance, "below which no adverse noncancer health effects should result from a lifetime of exposure". Reference doses have been most commonly determined for pesticides. The EPA defines an oral reference dose (abbreviated RfD) as: [A]n estimate, with uncertainty spanning perhaps an order of magnitude, of a daily oral exposure to the human population (including sensitive subgroups) that is likely to be without an appreciable risk of deleterious effects during a lifetime. \mathrm{RfD} \mathrm{(mg/kg/day)} = {\mathrm{NOEL} \mathrm{(mg/kg/day)} \over \mathrm{UF}_{\mathrm{inter}} \cdot \mathrm{UF}_{\mathrm{intra}} \cdot \mathrm{UF}_{\mathrm{other}}} Frequently, a "lowest-observed-adverse-effect level" or LOAEL is used in place of a NOEL. If adverse effects are observed at all dose levels tested, then the smallest dose tested, the LOAEL, is used to calculate the RfD. An additional uncertainty factor usually applied in these cases, since the NOAEL, by definition, would be lower than the LOAEL had it been observed. If studies using human subjects are used to determine a RfD, then the interspecies uncertainty factor can be reduced to 1, but generally the 10-fold intraspecies uncertainty factor is retained. Such studies are rare.
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