Acute Toxicity is a property of a substance that has toxic effects on a living organism, when that organism is exposed to a lethal dose of a substance once. In other words, basically a short term version of chronic toxicity.
It addresses the acutetoxicity of agents such as soil fumigants, fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, miticides, molluscicides, nematicides, or rodenticides.
Assignment to a Toxicity Class is based typically on results of acutetoxicity studies such as the determination of LD50 values in animal experiments, notably rodents, via oral, or sometimes inhaled, or external application.
The Toxicity Class generally does not address issues of other potential harm of the agent, such as bioaccumulation, issues of carcinogenicity, teratogenicity, or mutagenic effects, or the impact on reproduction.
Evaluation of acutetoxicity data should include the relationship, if any, between the exposure of animals to the test substance and the incidence and severity of all abnormalities, including behavioral and clinical abnormalities, the reversibility of observed abnormalities, gross lesions, body weight changes, effects on mortality, and any other toxic effects.
Acutetoxicity helps workers understand the health consequences from a single exposure to a chemical.
Acutetoxicity differs from chronic toxicity, which describes the adverse health effects from repeated (lower level) exposures to a substance over a longer period (months to years).
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