[Criteria for the determination of chronic exposure to hazardous substances via soil ingestion].

Legally recoverable protection of human health against pollutant effects must have for the enforcement in practice a technically comprehensible toxicological basis, i.e., a coherence or connection between the toxicological and legal definition of a dangerous situation must be found. For this purpose toxicological and socially accepted reference points in the unit "mg of pollutant amount absorbed per kg of weight per day" (mg/[kg of weight x d]) may be used to assess a danger in the sense a sufficient probability a damage to human health exists after exposure to certain pollutant concentrations. Based on the plausible toxicological assumption that above this reference point in case of an undisturbed course of action and by giving consideration to all exposure pathways a threshold of harmlessness including all groups of the population would be exceeded, criteria both for non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic substances or for substances suspected to cause cancer are being developed. These criteria allow to determine from which point the existence of a danger would be assessable as "sufficiently probable", and hence the required coherence between legal and toxicological view to be established.