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by mistrial9 1435 days ago
this is outdated thinking. LD50 is a measure of poison in testing, but since then it is acknowledged that there are cumulative over a lifetime effects, there are endocrine disrupting effects, and there may be effects from small doses that tip balancing systems in the body significantly.. those are from memory, not a specialist here.
2 comments

Alcohol has cumulative effects too. The long term effects are still dose dependent. My point is you can’t just eyeball it by being like “well that guy bullshitted then refused to drink it”. You need to do a bunch of hard work taking measurements. You know it’s not super toxic as typically used or huge swathes of people would be keeling over dead. But it could be long term toxic at the doses a farmer or landscaper is exposed too. It could have small absolute effects on everyone that could be detected in mass population statistics although that’s much much harder to untangle.
Water also has an LD50 but you wouldn't say there are cumulative over lifetime harms from drinking water.
water tainted with lead may be more to the point