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MOVEMENT OF TOXICANTS IN THE ENVIRONMENT

11

1.3.1Exposure Classes

Exposure classes include toxicants in food, air, water, and soil as well as toxicants characteristic of domestic and occupational Settings. Toxicant exposure classes are described in detail in Chapter 4.

1.3.2Use Classes

Use classes include drugs of abuse, therapeutic drugs, agricultural chemicals, food additives and contaminants, metals, solvents, combustion products, cosmetics, and toxins. Some of these, such as combustion products, are the products of use processes rather than being use classes. All of these groups of chemicals are discussed in detail in Chapter 5.

1.4MOVEMENT OF TOXICANTS IN THE ENVIRONMENT

Chemicals released into the environment rarely remain in the form, or at the location, of release. For example, agricultural chemicals used as sprays may drift from the point of application as air contaminants or enter runoff water as water contaminants. Many of these chemicals are susceptible to fungal or bacterial degradation and are rapidly detoxified, frequently being broken down to products that can enter the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen cycles. Other agricultural chemicals, particularly halogenated organic compounds, are recalcitrant to a greater or lesser degree to metabolism by microorganisms and persist in soil and water as contaminants; they may enter biologic food chains and move to higher trophic levels or persist in processed crops as food contaminants. This same scenario is applicable to any toxicant released into the environment for a specific use or as a result of industrial processes, combustion, and so on. Chemicals released into the environment are also susceptible to chemical degradation, a process often stimulated by ultraviolet light.

Although most transport between inanimate phases of the environment results in wider dissemination, at the same time dilution of the toxicant in question and transfer among living creatures may result in increased concentration or bioaccumulation. Lipid soluble toxicants are readily taken up by organisms following exposure in air, water, or soil. Unless rapidly metabolized, they persist in the tissues long enough to be transferred to the next trophic level. At each level the lipophilic toxicant tends to be retained while the bulk of the food is digested, utilized, and excreted, thus increasing the toxicant concentration. At some point in the chain, the toxicant can become deleterious, particularly if the organism at that level is more susceptible than those at the level preceding it. Thus the eggshell thinning in certain raptorial birds was almost certainly due to the uptake of DDT and DDE and their particular susceptibility to this type of toxicity. Simplified food chains are shown in Figure 1.3.

It is clear that such transport can occur through both aquatic and terrestrial food chains, although in the former, higher members of the chains, such as fish, can accumulate large amounts of toxicants directly from the medium. This accumulation occurs because of the large area of gill filaments, their intimate contact with the water and the high flow rate of water over them. Given these characteristics and a toxicant with a high partition coefficient between lipid membranes and water, considerable uptake is inevitable.

12 INTRODUCTION TO TOXICOLOGY

Soil invertebrates predatory invertebrates terrestrial vertebrates predatory birds or mammals

Soil

Residues

Terrestrial plants herbivorous animals predatory birds or mammals

Figure 1.3 Examples of simplified food chains.

These and all other environmental aspects of toxicology are discussed in Part VII.

SUGGESTED READING

Hodgson, E., and R. C. Smart, eds. Introduction to Biochemical Toxicology, 3rd ed. New York: Wiley, 2001.

Hodgson, E., R. B. Mailman, and J. E. Chambers, eds. Dictionary of Toxicology, 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1998.

Klaassen, C. D. ed. Casarett and Doull’s Toxicology: The Basic Science of Poisons, 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001.

Timbrell, J. A. Principles of Biochemical Toxicology, 3rd ed. London: Taylor and Francis, 2000.

Wexler, P. Information Resources in Toxicology, 3rd ed. San Diego: Academic Press, 2000.

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