INDUSTRIAL TOXICOLOGY
The industrial toxicologist plays a vital role in developing a wide range of effective and safe products including petrochemicals, medicines, pesticides, cosmetics, food and drink and household products.
Every company that makes a product or substance has a duty of care to its customers to ensure that the product is safe for its intended use. This means that many companies must check to make sure that the products that they sell (and their constituent chemicals) do not pose a risk to human health. They need to consider not only whether the product poses a risk to consumers, but also to production workers in their factories, professionals who may be exposed to a product more frequently than a typical consumer (such as hairdressers), and also whether the product could harm the environment after it has been used.
How much safety information is required on a given product often depends on the likely level of exposure to the product, which will depend on how much of the product is made, its intended use, how much is used and for how long. For example, we may want to know far more about a food additive than a new additive that makes up a small part of car engine oil. Particular industries, such as the pharmaceutical and pesticide industries, often need to conduct many studies and experiments to demonstrate the safety of the chemicals that they develop. Although many naturally occurring food ingredients are assumed to be safe, where new food ingredients or additives are developed, these too must have a robust safety package.
