Chemical Hazards

In the jargon of health professionals, the hazards of chemicals are typically divided into Health Hazards and Physical Hazards.  "Health hazard" is basically equal to toxicity.   Poisonous-ness.  Make you sick, give you cancer, cause birth defects.... etcetera, or simply make you sicken and die (think arsenic, or nerve gas).  And not just you, also children, your unborn children, your pets and your houseplants....)

The term "physical hazard" is used to refer to the type of dangers that chemicals present that are not their toxicity, but rather their ability to burn you up, blow you up, dissolve your skin, or suffocate you.

These distinctions rarely seem immediately intuitive to scientists, but to medical care providers as well as health and safety professionals, they are a natural and obvious distinction.