On the Relationship Between Carcinogenicity and Acute Toxicity

Parodi et al. ⁽¹⁾ and Zeise et al. ⁽²⁾ found a surprising statistical correlation (or association) between acute toxicity and carcinogenic potency. In order to shed light on the questions of whether or not it is a causal correlation, and whether or not it is a statistical or tautological artifact, we have compared the correlations for the NCI/NTP data set with those for chemicals not in this set. Carcinogenic potencies were taken from the Gold et al. database. We find a weak correlation with an average value of TD₅₀/LD₅₀= 0.04 for the non-NCI data set, compared with TD₅₀/LD₅₀= 0.15 for the NCI data set. We conclude that it is not easy to distinguish types of carcinogens on the basis of whether or not they are acutely toxic.