Sufficient similarity

Part of the 'sufficient similarity' doctrine, from EPA Guidelines for the Health Risk Assessment of Chemical Mixtures

Sufficient similarity is a 20th-century para-legal concept used in the chemical industry for toxicological studies.^[1][2] The term was first employed in a restricted sense to assess surrogacy of chemical mixtures by the EPA, and has descended from there into the scientific argot.^[2][3]

The concept is somewhat nebulous, and statistics are involved.^[4] A group of America researchers in 2018 posed themselves the question how similar must a product be in order to be well-represented by the tested reference sample?^[5] Because the concept was derived from the EPA, chemical similarity and biological similarity are equally important.^[5] The concept is employed "so that safety data from the tested reference can be applied to untested materials,"^[5] because "when toxicity data are not available for a chemical mixture of concern, US EPA guidelines allow risk assessment to be based on data for a surrogate mixture considered “sufficiently similar” in terms of chemical composition and component proportions."^[1]

References

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