LD50 data is most common, but that is only only a very limited aspect of toxicity. Very few chemicals in commerce have been adequately tested for hepatotoxicity, neurotoxicity, learning impairment, the many types of reproductive toxicity, etc.
Recently, we've learned new things about the toxicity of aspirin. There's so much we don't know about the toxicity of chemicals. � Pete Reinhardt
? As of 2021, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has registered 22,818 substances from 15,718 companies in 100,679 registrations under the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation. This document
contains further details and also notes that ethanol is the top-registered product with 701 registrations:
https://echa.europa.eu/documents/10162/2741157/registration_statistics_en.pdf
I think that puts an absolute bottom limit on the active # used in the US. I would imagine that it's substantially more given the laxer regulation in the US in addition to trade secret claims, so I would take the ACC's claim as a baseline.
The number of substance used in commerce has recently been estimated as more than 350,000. The authors note "A noteworthy finding is that the identities of many chemicals remain publicly unknown because they are claimed as confidential (over 50?000)
or ambiguously described (up to 70?000)"
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.9b06379
So, regardless. whether it''s 40,000 or 350,000, I would imagine that few of the toxicity analyses are comprehensive or complete (except for the IARC), and that far fewer have ever been double checked or replicated. So really, the question boils
down to what a "small percentage" means in that first statement. Is it a half a percent or 4-5% or 20%? Given the wide margin of error of these competing estimates for the # of chemicals, then I think "small" is indeed an apt descriptor. "Few" might been
even more appropriate, but I defer to the toxicologists (and Monona's encyclopedic wisdom) for that.
Rob Toreki
Listers,
I wish to assess the veracity of the statement: "There are many tens of thousands of chemicals in use, but only a small percentage have been tested for toxicity. "
With regard to "toxicity" the IARC has listed 121 chemicals as known carcinogens (although this, of course, is not the only form of "toxicity" that affect humans.) RTECS (
What
is the Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances? - Definition from Safeopedia ) tallies 150,000 chemicals in the list formerly known as the "Toxic Substances List". Their methodology suggests that some
"toxicity" testing has occurred the chemical on this list but there is no connection to the NTP list.
Using these numbers in various combinations, one could conclude that the phrase "small percentage" is the original quote above is "pretty fair" or "entirely unfair". Complex situations often should not be reduced to a single statement and, at the very least,
if the original quote is accurate it should be accompanied by some explanations.
I would welcome from the group some insights about a "fair" statement about "chemical exposure" and the degree to which we have determined the toxicity within that group.
I will end with Monona's title from her book: Pick
Your Poison: How Our Mad Dash to Chemical Utopia is Making Lab Rats of Us All.
Dave
David C. Finster
Professor Emeritus, Department of Chemistry
Wittenberg University
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