Kahjulikkus

Kahjulikkus is a noun in Estonian describing the quality or degree of being harmful. It denotes the potential to cause harm to health, safety, or the environment, and is used to talk about both actual harm and the risk of harm. The word is formed from the adjective kahjulik (harmful) with the abstract-noun suffix -kus, and is related to the word kahju (damage).

In usage, kahjulikkus appears in health, safety and environmental discourse. It is commonly used in toxicology, pharmacology, consumer safety, and risk assessment to express how harmful a substance, action or condition can be. Phrases such as ravimi kahjulikkus (the harmfulness of a medicine) or keskkonna kahjulikkus (environmental harmfulness) are typical. In regulatory contexts, kahjulikkus is assessed alongside exposure to determine overall risk, and it may be described qualitatively or with quantitative indicators.

The concept is distinct from related terms. Kahjulik describes something harmful, while kahjulikkus focuses on the property of causing harm. It is related to but not identical with ohtlikkus (hazard or danger), which emphasizes potential risk, whereas kahjulikkus often emphasizes the severity or likelihood of harm once exposure occurs. There is no universal numeric scale for kahjulikkus; assessments rely on context, available data, and established decision frameworks in health, safety, and environmental regulation.