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A critique of the use of hormesis in risk assessment

MD-143-06, Environmental Carcinogenesis Division National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, US Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, USA; kitchin.kirk{at}epa.gov

J Wanzer Drane

Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

There are severe problems and limitations with the use of hormesis as the principal dose-response default assumption in risk assessment. These problems and limitations include: (a) unknown prevalence of hormetic doseresponse curves; (b) random chance occurrence of hormesis and the shortage of data on the repeatability of hormesis; (c) unknown degree of generalizability of hormesis; (d) there are dose-response curves that are not hormetic, therefore hormesis cannot be universally generalized; (e) problems of post hoc rather than a priori hypothesis testing; (f) a possible large problem of ‘false positive’ hormetic data sets which have not been extensively replicated; (g) the ‘mechanism of hormesis’ is not understood at a rigorous scientific level; (h) in some cases hormesis may merely be the overall sum of many different mechanisms and many different dose-response curves - some beneficial and some toxic. For all of these reasons, hormesis should not now be used as the principal dose-response default assumption in risk assessment. At this point, it appears that hormesis is a long way away from common scientific acceptance and wide utility in biomedicine and use as the principal default assumption in a risk assessment process charged with ensuring public health protection.

Key Words: default assumption • dose-response • hormesis • risk assessment

Human & Experimental Toxicology, Vol. 24, No. 5, 249-253 (2005)
DOI: 10.1191/0960327105ht520oa


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