Toxins: environmental

Summary

Psychology and environmental toxicology

Environmental toxins that affect human health and wellbeing may either be airborne or foodborne. The primary target of airborne environmental toxins are the upper and lower airways, and various respiratory diseases have been shown to be related to environmental exposure to air pollution. However, if a toxin enters the deeper structures of the lung due to small molecular size, inhaled chemicals will also enter the blood stream, thus causing or contributing to damage of other organ systems, such as the cardiovascular system, the immune system, the endocrine system or the brain. If primarily foodborne, environmental toxins will be ingested rather than inhaled. The distinction between airborne and foodborne is somewhat artificial because airborne chemicals are often deposited on soil and water and may, thus, enter the food chain.

Since many organs and organ systems can be targets of environmental toxins, different scientific approaches and sharing of knowledge across disciplines are required in order to arrive at a balanced rational risk assessment. If the brain is assumed or known to be the critical organ for a particular toxin, its adverse effect at a particular level of environmental exposure is typically studied within neurotoxicology. General neurotoxicology draws upon a broad spectrum of general neuroscience methods, such as neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, neurophysiology or neuropharmacology to study adverse effects of chemicals on the structure and function of the mature or developing nervous system.