title: Interpretations of primary carcinogenicity data in 29 trichloroethylene risk assessments.
abstract: This paper explores to what extent interpretations of individual primary carcinogenicity data differ between different risk assessors, and discusses possible reasons for such differences as well as their impact on the overall risk assessment conclusions. For this purpose 29 different TCE carcinogenicity risk assessments are used as examples. It is concluded that the TCE risk assessors surprisingly often interpret and evaluate primary data differently. Two particular reasons for differences in data interpretation are discussed: different assessments of statistics, and different assessments of whether the results obtained in bioassays have toxicological relevance. Differences in the interpretation and evaluation of epidemiological data are also explored and discussed.
authors.affiliation: Philosophy Unit, Royal Institute of Technology, Fiskartorpsv 15A, S-100 44, Stockholm, Sweden. cr@infra.kth.se
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rudén
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001681:Biological Assay / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015197:Carcinogenicity Tests / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015986:Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D016021:Epidemiologic Studies; D051379:Mice; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000139:chemically induced* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D051381:Rats; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012997:Solvents / Q000633:toxicity*; D014241:Trichloroethylene / Q000633:toxicity*
chemical_list: D012997:Solvents; D014241:Trichloroethylene