The Pros And Cons Of Toxicity

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Toxicity is the property of material that produces a harmful effect on a biological system by interfering with its structure and function. These materials are called as toxins. Toxins may include many chemical and physical agents. The knowledge of poisonous substances occurring in the nature has been gained by man from early times. The ancient Egyptians, since (B.C. 1550) had known about toxic properties of substances of natural origin. Toxicology (Greek : Toxicon-poison, logos-study) is the study of toxins and their adverse effects on living organisms. The study of toxicology serves society in many ways to protect human and the environment from the deleterious effects of toxicants. It involves the study of internal and external exposures to…show more content…
Environmental pollutants are becoming toxicants due to their adverse effects on living beings. Environmental impacts of waste from agricultural and food processing industry are inevitable due to their wide composition (Thakur, 2006). Now a days, toxicity studies of such pollutants in environment are gaining immense importance. In recent years pollution of the ecosystem due to various anthropogenic substances known as xenobiotics is rising. Some of the examples of xenobiotics are toxic chemicals used in industries, substances from wastewater, heavy metals in different applications and these contaminants may occur in air, water and soil, those are released by human activities but not present in natural condition. Coastal water resources are found to be contaminated with industrial and urban waste (Shanthi and Gajendran, 2009). These xenobiotics cause harm to organisms coming in their contact. They act indirectly by modifying essential bioconstituents, affecting nutrition and altering physiological mechanism. Some compounds are readily toxic in nature or sometime need to get change in chemical nature before they cause toxicity. They can get accumulated or distributed in target organism and affect specific cells, tissue or whole organ getting exposed to these…show more content…
Chromate is well documented human and animal carcinogen (Snow, 1991). In vitro study was carried out using bacteriophage species to determine possible role of Cr III in genotoxicity by Snow (1991). Occupational and environmental exposure of Cr III has been wide spread which is also used in synthesis of many pesticides. Experiments have attempted to determine carcinogenic and mutagenic potential of this compound. Ambiguous results were obtained by many workers in vivo studies carried out with different test
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