The use of safety factors for controlling risk

Abstract

Safety factors often are applied to animal bioasssay data on toxic effects to establish dosage levels for which it is hoped that there will be negligible deleterious effects on human health. A relationship between safety factors and disease risk was shown, making it possible to determine the size of the safety factor needed to maintain low levels of disease risk within animal populations. Safe doses obtained from the application of safety factors to the largest no-observable-effect level were similar to safe doses obtained by linear extrapolation.