The concern may be limited to effects on
humans, as in the case of drugs and food additives. Toxicologists in the chemical industry,
however, must be concerned not only with the risk posed by a company’s chemicals
(insecticides, herbicides, solvents, etc.) to humans but also with potential effects on fish,
birds, and plants, as well as other factors that might disturb the balance of the ecosystem.
Descriptive toxicology is of course not divorced from mechanistic studies, as such studies
provide important clues to a chemical’s mechanism of action, and thus contribute to the
development of mechanistic toxicology through hypothesis generation.