Env410 Toxicology Worksheet

Also depicted in this paper is the type of cancers caused by each chemical and other related health problems associated with each chemical. Finally, the role of government agencies such as FDA, EPA and OSHA in preventing excessive amount or zero amounts of toxic chemicals from entering the environment will be discussed. The last paragraphs will enumerate the inferred conclusion from my research on Agent Orange, DDT and Benzene.

The purpose of this course is to provide the fundamental knowledge of the effects of environmental chemicals on living systems, and the toxic responses of the human and plant systems. Students will discuss risk, ethics, and social responsibility with regard to environmental toxicology.

Conduct studies on food, air, water and soil to determine how they are altered when coming into contact with medicines, garden chemicals and industrial chemicals

The higher the trophic level, the higher the concentration of toxins in the species. There may be a tiny bit of pesticide in a plant which is then eaten by a insect which is then eaten by a shrew. The shrew then gets more toxins, then giving the owl which is at the top of the food web the most toxins causing it to become sick and die. Overall, these pesticides in ecosystems can disturb food webs, ecosystems, and hurt

There are two main types of toxicity, acute and chronic. Acute toxicity refers to a relatively high dose of a toxin given over a short period of time. Chronic toxicity is a relatively low dose of a toxin given over a longer time period. Acute toxicity is measured by the Lethal Dose 50 (LD50). LD50 is the dose of a specific substance that kills 50% of test organisms, and it varies from substance to substance.

Jones, P. R., Sheppard, M. A., & Snowden, C. B. (2010). Impact of poison prevention

Physicians can review the details of the poisonous substances, animal and human exposure and use this information to provide improved patient care services. The website includes all pediatric exposure and this information can educate parents to protect from different poisonous exposure (June 2013 GPC). The GPC maintains a database to provide better understanding of the poison related issues by educating GA residents and healthcare professionals. Healthcare providers can be aware of any drug that probably has caused poisonous effect of consumers by referring to the GPC website. The GPC had received an average of more than six thousand poison related calls each month during the 2014. The GPC website and toll free number for anyone who wants to have more improved knowledge about poison related issues (June 2013

What has been brought to light in recent years is the effects of these chemicals on the body’s immune response. By introducing these toxic chemicals into the body, the potency of the immune system is compromised. More commonly than not, the body’s magnificent defense system will kick in and destroy foreign invaders but all it can take is an overwhelming amount of chemicals to slow or even shut down the body’s response systems. A large amount of these types of chemicals introduced into the body at one time would be considered acute toxicity and could even cause death. Additionally, a small amount of these poisonous substances brought into the body over a long period would be considered chronic toxicity and can have detrimental effects on the body’s natural response (Hoernschemeyer 55-57). This information is startling enough to want to make a change from conventionally grown food to pesticide-free organic

The objective of the subacute toxicity test is to determine toxicity after repeated administration of the tested material. It helps to establish doses for sub-chronic studies. The duration of Sub- Acute Toxicity test is 14 to 90 days. The test system uses 2 species that may contain mice, rats, rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs. The dose administration contains 3-4 doses given by the same routes as the previous toxicity. The routes commonly used are Oral, dermal or intravenous. The parameter considered are mortality, weight change, signs of toxicity, clinical pathology, pathology and histology. The sub- acute toxicity test uses laboratory strains of young healthy adult rats. The study is performed at 4 different dose levels. The test compounds are administrated on route

The salt marsh is an ecosystem that has many different organisms and species dwelling upon the surface. Of these organisms, they include sea lettuce, the Sheepshead Minnow, Fluke and the Great Blue Heron. These organisms interact with each other in the ecosystem. The sea lettuce is a producer, which gets eaten by the consumer, the minnows. Then, minnow is eaten by a secondary consumer, a fluke. Lastly, the Great blue Heron, as a top predator and tertiary consumer, eats the fluke. Through this process, toxins are transferred from trophic level to trophic level. An example of this is the BP oil spill, which released a large amount of toxins to the ocean, and animals can take in the toxins, causing large amounts of deaths. Each organism has a lethal threshold, or the amount of toxins an organism can have before death. The Great Blue Heron in this case has a lethal threshold of 44 toxins (EduChange, 2004). A lab has been done to model the biological magnification of toxins in an ecosystem with the Great Blue Heron. If a Great Blue Heron eats for five weeks, then the animal will die because the lethal threshold of 44 toxins has been passed and the toxins cannot be

LD50 or the lethal dose of 50%, is the amount of a chemical which kills 50% of the population of a test species (used in toxicity evaluations) exposed to that. The EPA study used IC50 toxicity data of selected chemicals towards HeLa cell lines to predict their in-vivo (LD50) toxicity values. IC50 is an index of the toxicity of a substance defined as the concentration of that chemical which have inhibitory effects on the growth of the 50% of the test population. HeLa cell used in this study is an immortal cell line, which is the oldest yet most commonly used human cell line for scientific research.21 In the next step, we explain how LD50 data predicted from the EPA’s correlative model can be further used to estimate the human health impacts

Dose-limiting toxicity describes a situation when side effects of a particular treatment or use of a drug are serious or severe to prevent an increase in a drug dose or level of treatment. Cisplatin remains a major antineoplastic drug for the treatment of solid tumor and is classified as an alkylatin agent. Nephrotoxicity is a major dose-limiting toxicity that is related to cisplatin.

Every day we are exposed to toxins through what we eat and drink and via environmental poisoning. The main sources of environmental poisoning include smoking, pollution and exposure to harmful household cleaning products. Detoxification is very important in promoting natural health because toxic overload is often the cause of a number of illnesses. Detoxification is a key function of the body, it is estimated that 80 percent of all chemical processes that take place in the body involve some form of detoxification.

The molecular structure of a substance can help to predict the toxicity of it. By comparing the substance 's structure to that of more than 12,000

Toxins are chemical, biological or physical substances that cause damage to an organism when they enter the biological system. These toxics can affect the entire system of the organism or just a substructure of the organism like cells or organs. Biological systems respond to toxins in various ways and this depends on many factors. Even though many toxic effects of foreign compounds are biochemically based, the way these effects are expressed may be very different. The interaction of toxins with normal metabolic processes can cause muscle paralysis or even fall in blood pressure. Toxic responses can be detected in various ways, these responses may be the all-or-none type like death of organism or they can be graded responses. Therefore the means of detection can be death, pathological changes, biochemical change, physiological change and changes in the normal status of the biological systemss (Monsoon, 2010).