Consistent with the US EPA's previous derivation of the perchlorate RfD, which is also based on decreased iodine uptake in humans, we considered several uncertainly factors (UFs), and determined that a factor of 10 for human variability was appropriate, as well as a factor of three for database adequacy.
For the "safety factor" portion of the overall modifying factors, namely, database adequacy, malignancy, and genotoxicity, judgment is somewhat subjective.
It is important to note that DNT studies are rarely available in classical regulatory toxicological databases, therefore raising the question of the adequacy of currently used health-based guidance values to cover this specific endpoint.
Prior to building the database, Perl scripts were also used in the generation of tag sequences, genome adequacy evaluation (BLAST) [ 14], melting temperature calculation and likelihood of secondary structure formation [ 15, 16].
We critically discuss the experimental and theoretical evidence, including the general adequacy of database approaches for questions of this kind, and come to the conclusion that the last word for this fundamental question has not yet been spoken.
The first is that due to intractable ethical issues about testing in humans, the database on which the adequacy of the uncertainty factors can be judged is necessarily poor.
The adequacy of database factor, whereby the better the quality of the relevant tumor studies the smaller the factor, is given a value of 2 to reflect a high degree of confidence.
However, ethical considerations related to the fact that DNA is itself a unique identifier [ 7, 8] called into question the adequacy of public databases and led to the creation of controlled-access databases, such as the database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP) in the United States [ 9] and the European Genotype Archive in Europe [ 10].
Regardless of the adequacy of any custom database used by Times reporters as a basic research tool, a quick search using Google or another search engine or database should be a routine part of research.
Complete available human tumor data of the Stanford Microarray Database was downloaded and filtered for relevance, adequacy and reliability.
We reviewed the reference lists of key articles to ensure adequacy and completeness of the literature database, and limited article retrieval to articles written in English or with English translations available.
