Section 1: Key Points

What We've Covered
In this section, we covered several important concepts:

• Toxicology is the study of adverse effects of chemicals and physical agents on living organisms.
• A xenobiotic is a foreign substance taken into the body.
• A toxic agent is any chemical, physical, or biological agent that can produce an adverse biological effect.
• Toxic substances can be systemic toxicants, which affect the entire body or multiple organs, or organ toxicants, which affect a specific organ or tissues.
• The dose of a substance is the most important determinant of toxicity.

Coming Up...
In the next section, we will explore the concept of dose and its importance to toxicology in greater detail.

Previous Section

Next Section