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]
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]