Glossary


ARfD: acute reference dose

ADI: acceptable daily intake

Anti-androgenic: A substance that inhibits the biological effects of androgenic hormones. Androgenic hormones are hormones, such as testosterone or androsterone, which control the development and maintenance of masculine characteristics.(Answers.com)

Benchmark dose: An exposure due to a dose of a substance associated with a specified low incidence of risk, generally in the range of 1% to 10%, of a health effect; or the dose associated with a specified measure or change of a biological effect (Environmental Health Criteria XXX)

Bootstrapping: a method of calculating errors using only the data at hand as a distribution (Answers.com)

Carcinogenicity is the capacity of causing or tending to cause cancer (Wiktionary)

DALY: The Disability Adjusted Life Year or DALY is a health gap measure that extends the concept of potential years of life lost due to premature death (PYLL) to include equivalent years of ‘healthy’ life lost by virtue of being in states of poor health or disability. The DALY combines in one measure the time lived with disability and the time lost due to premature mortality. One DALY can be thought of as one lost year of ‘healthy’ life and the burden of disease as a measurement of the gap between current health status and an ideal situation where everyone lives into old age free of disease and disability. (WHO)

Effect: Change in the state or dynamics of an organism, system, or (sub)population caused by the exposure to an agent (IPCS Harmonization Project)

Exposure: Concentration or amount of a particular agent that reaches a target organism, system, or (sub)population in a specific frequency for a defined duration (IPCS Harmonization Project)

Genotoxic: Damaging to DNA and thereby capable of causing mutations or cancer. (Answers.com)

Margin of Exposure (MOE): Margin of exposure is the ratio between a defined point (e.g., NOAEL or BMDL) on the (animal) dose-response curve for the critical effect and a point estimate of the human exposure (IPCS Harmonization Project)

NOAEL: no observed adverse effect level


Raw agricultural commodities (RAC): this term means any unprocessed human food or animal feed crop (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

Severity: the degree to which an effect changes and impairs the functional capacity of an organ system (IPCS Harmonization Project)

TDI: tolerable daily intake

Uncertainty: Imperfect knowledge concerning the present or future state of an organism, system, or (sub)population under consideration (IPCS Harmonization Project)

Variability: Observable diversity in biological sensitivity or response, and in exposure parameters (Environmental Health Criteria XXX)