INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF CLINICAL CHEMISTRY AND LABORATORY MEDICINE SCIENTIFIC DIVISION and INTERNATIONAL UNION OF PURE AND APPLIED CHEMISTRY, CHEMISTRY AND HUMAN HEALTH DIVISION
Properties and units in the clinical laboratory sciences Part XX. Properties and units in clinical and environmental human toxicology (IUPAC Technical Report)
John Duffus1, Ivan Bruunshuus2, Rita Cornelis3, René Dybkær4, Monica Nordberg5, and Wolf Kuelpmann6
1The Edinburgh Centre for Toxicology, Edinburgh, UK; 2National Board of Health Copenhagen, Denmark; 3Laboratory for Analytical Chemistry, Universiteit Gent, Gent, Belgium; 4Standardisation in Laboratory Medicine, H:S Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; 5Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; 6Institut fuer Klinische Chemie, Medizinische Hochschule Hannover, Hannover, Germany
Abstract: This document describes the introduction of the concept of property in the field of clinical and environmental human toxicology for the presentation of results of clinical laboratory investigations. It follows the IFCC-IUPAC systematic terminological rules and attempts to create a common base for communication between the clinical chemist, the medical practitioner, the human toxicologist, and the environmental toxicologist.
The term designating a substance being a toxicant may be an international nonproprietary name (INN), a generic name, a registered trade name, a fantasy name, or other. This causes difficulties in the transmission of requests and reports on properties involving substances in biological fluids and environmental media to and from laboratories, to the end user, and in the collating of this information from different sources.
The document comprises a list of properties of human and environmental systems involving toxicants for use in transmitting medical laboratory data. The document recommends terms based on the format developed by the IFCC and IUPAC to facilitate interaction between disciplines and unambiguous interpretation of data, e.g., for purposes of risk interpretation. Systematic terms are presented together with a code (identified by the letters NPU) for each.
The complete CNPU Database may be found at http://dior.imt.liu.se/cnpu/info.htm.
Keywords: human; toxicology; environmental; property; NPU codes; clinical laboratories; units.
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