[Chemical safety as a problem of epidemiology of non-infectious diseases]

Based on the analysis of adopted in sanitary science methodology for the study and evaluation of the biological action and hygienic significance of environmental factors there was shown the need for the use of laws and methodology of classical epidemiology to ensure the chemical safety in the recognition and elimination of the group of diseases of chemical etiology, outbreaks of similar non infectious diseases. It is stated that individually small "non-toxic" doses of chemicals, but "loading" a large population and forming a large collective dose apparently can be implemented in a stochastic population health damage, detectable only on the basis of large-scale epidemiological studies to assess the risk. These approaches are presented to be especially important for agents in the environment, optimal for which is not absence, but the presence for provision of necessary target effect (pesticides, disinfectants and other household products, etc.). The main task of the epidemiological analysis of local toxic "bursts" and large-scale "epidemics" of this kind is an optimization of the complex of measures implemented by an adequate assessment of their medical, social and economic performance.