06414 IUPAC Gold Book - toxicity 10.1351/goldbook.T06414 T06414 current 1 Capacity to cause injury to a living organism defined with reference to the quantity of substance administered or absorbed, the way in which the substance is administered (inhalation, ingestion, topical application, injection) and distributed in time (single or repeated doses), the type and severity of injury, the time needed to produce the injury, the nature of the organism(s) affected and other relevant conditions.Adverse effects of a substance on a living organism defined with reference to the quantity of substance administered or absorbed, the way in which the substance is administered (inhalation, ingestion, topical application, injection) and distributed in time (single or repeated doses), the type and severity of injury, the time needed to produce the injury, the nature of the organism(s) affected, and other relevant conditions.Measure of incompatibility of a substance with life: this quantity may be expressed as the reciprocal of the absolute value of median lethal dose (\(\frac{1}{\rm{LD}_{50}}\)) or concentration (\(\frac{1}{\rm{LC}_{50}}\)). median lethal dose https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/M03810 PAC, 1993, 65, 2003. 'Glossary for chemists of terms used in toxicology (IUPAC Recommendations 1993)' on page 2107 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199365092003) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/T06414/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/T06414/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/T06414/plain Citation: 'toxicity' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.T06414 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-05-10T05:27:11+00:00