A simple R-based function to estimate lethal concentrations

Every year thousands of new substances are synthetized and marketed. Either by regulatory demands or scientific purposes, these substances should all be tested. The determination of lethal concentration (LC) in a given population after toxicity testing in the laboratory is still the best way to establish and compare toxicity. In this technical note, we propose an R function to estimate LC with improvements on the choice of experimental design and calculation parameters, as well as in editing and spreadsheet loading. Although only LC50 values are considered herein, the same statistical considerations apply to EC50 and ED50 from quantal (dichotomous, binomial, binary) data. A running example is also provided.