Section 9: Key Points

What We've Covered
This section made the following main points:
  • Toxicokinetics is essentially the study of how a substance enters the body and what happens to it inside the body.
    • The term "disposition" is often used in place of toxicokinetics to describe how the body disposes of a xenobiotic over time.
  • The four inter-related processes of toxicokinetics are:
    1. Absorption — the substance enters the body.
    2. Distribution — the substance moves from the site of entry to other areas of the body.
    3. Biotransformation — the substance is transformed into new chemicals (metabolites).
    4. Excretion — the substance or its metabolites leave the body.
  • The disposition of a toxicant and its biological reactivity are the factors that determine the severity of toxicity when a xenobiotic enters the body.
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