principile of enviromental toxicology

1. Principles of Environmental
Biochemistry
TIK:
To understand the importance of environmental
biochemistry and may have more motivation to explore
the science of environmental biochemistry

2. Introduction
Environmental biochemistry is a science that study the
biochemical processes that take place in the living body
caused by direct and indirectly contact from the material in
the environment that can cause unusual process of
establishing their lives

3. - Industrial chemical workers
(1940-present)
Workers typically are exposed to
a greater number of carcinogens
for longer periods of time.
Occupations with high risk of cancer :
Health care workers, pharmaceutical and laboratory
workers, refinery workers, rubber workers, furniture
makers, and pesticide workers.
Occupational and
Environmental Toxicology

4. Awareness of Environmental Exposures &
Impacts Is Growing
–Air pollution
–Water contamination
–Harmful substances in
physical structures and
workplaces
–Food contamination
–Personal care products
Woodruff TJ, et al. Fertil Steril. 2008.

5. The Chemical Environment
• 80,000 chemicals in the Federal inventory
• 2,000 to 3,000 new chemicals introduced
each year

6. Toxics Release Inventory Top 20 Chemicals
Over 2 Billion lbs of Neurotoxic Emissions in 2000
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
TRI Top 20
1997
TRI Top 20
2000
Total Neurotoxicants
Emissions
TRI – Toxics Release Inventory

7. Developmental Testing of 2,863
Chemicals Produced > 1 million
lbs/year
21,4%
0.4%
78.2%
No Data
On Developmental
Toxicity
12 Tested for
Neurodevelopmental
Toxicity
According to EPA
Guidelines
Some Data
On Developmental
Toxicity

8. Hazard Data - Chemicals
Produced
> 1 Million Pounds/Year
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Percentage Tested
Acute Toxicity
Environmental Fate
Ecotoxicity
Mutagenicity
Chronic Toxicity
Reproductive
Toxicity
Full Set of Basic
Toxicity Tests
7% Full* Set of Basic
Toxicity Tests:
* Doesn’t Include Tests of
Neurodevelopmental Effects

9. Failure to Evaluate Impacts on
Children in Chemical Regulation
• Developmental neurotoxicity testing (DNT)
not required
• DNT testing not in proposed voluntary
testing schemes
• Even for chemicals with some toxicity
data, database has important deficiencies.

10. Failure to Evaluate Impacts on
Children
• Deficiencies in animal studies:
– Underestimate human DNT by 100-10,000 fold (Hg,
Pb, PCBs)
– Single genetic strains
– Test single chemical exposures (real exposures are to
mixtures)
– To test 10% commercial chemicals in combinations of
three requires 85 billion tests.
• Prospective epidemiological studies rarely
available

11. “…exposures of males and
females to foreign substances
prior to conception can affect
both their ability to conceive and
the health of their offspring.”
Davis DL, et al.
JAMA. 1998
Awareness of Reproductive
Effects Is Growing

12. Environmental Factors and Cancer Deaths
Diet 35% (10-70%)
Tobacco 30% (25-40%)
Infection 10% (?)
Alcohol 3% (2-4%)
Reproductive and sexual behavior 7% (1-13%)
Occupation 4% (2-8%)
Pollution 2% (<1-5%)
Geophysical factors 3% (2-4%)
Medicines and medical procedures 1% (0.5-3%)
Industrial Products 1% (<1-2%)
Adapted from Doll and Peto, 1981; Casarett and Doull’s Toxicology, 5th Ed.

14. Scope of environmental impacts
Raw
Materials
Extraction
Energy
Wastes
Chemical
Processing
Wastes
Product
Manufacturing
Wastes
Use, Reuse,
Disposal
Wastes
Materials
Energy
Materials
Energy
Materials
Energy
Materials
Pollution
Control
Pollution
Control
Life-
Cycle
Stages
global
warming
ozone
depletion
smog
formation
acidifi-
cation
ecological
harm
Human health
and ecosystem
damage
Midpoints
Endpoint

15. Module 1:
Global warming and related impacts
Chemical
Processing
Energy
Materials
Products
greenhouse
gas emissions
CO2, CH4, N2O
climate change;
sea level change
human mortality
or life adjustments
Cause and Effect Chain
CFCs
CO2
CH4
O3
N2O
Contribution to global
Warming; Phipps, NPPC,
http://www.snre.umich.edu/nppc/
Climate Change 1995, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, WMO and
UNEP, Cambridge University Press, 1996.

16. Module 1:
Human health toxicity
Chemical
Processing
Energy
Materials
Products
Toxic releases to
air, water, and soil
Transport, fate,
exposure pathways
& routes
Human health
damage; carcino-
genic & non...
Petroleum
Refining
9%
Chemical /
Allied
Products
51%
Transport-
ation
Equipment
7%
All Other
Industries
16%
Primary
Metals
8%
Electronic
Equipment
9%
Chemical
and Allied
Products
27%
Primary
Metals
22%
All Other
Industries
23%
Paper and
Allied
Products
5%
Petroleum
Refining
3%
Rubber
and Miscel-
laneous
Plastics
3%
Transport-
ation
5%
Fabricated
Metals
6%
Electronic
Equipment
6%
RCRA
Hazardous
Waste
EPCRA
Toxic
Waste
Allen and Rosselot, 1997

17. Western Civilization is
not sustainable as it is
currently constituted
— flawed technologies are an
important component of the
sustainability dilemma

18. “Altered Nature of Human Action”
“All previous ethics…[have been based upon the
premises]…that the human condition, determined by
the nature of man and the nature of things,was given
once for all; that the human good on that basis was
readily determinable; and that the range of human
action and therefore responsibility was narrowly
circumscribed. … [But] with certain development of
our powers the nature of human action has changed,
and … [given rise to] … a whole new dimension of
ethical relevance for which there is no precedent in
the standards and canons of traditional ethics.”
The Imperative of Responsibility: Finding an Ethics for the Technological Age, Hans Jonas, U. Chic. Press, 1984

19. A new reflection on ethical principles—including
such that, for lack of application, could hitherto
remain silent—is required for coping with those
issues.
The Imperative of Responsibility: Finding an Ethics for the Technological Age, Hans Jonas, U. Chic. Press, 1984
The altered, always enlarged nature of human
action, with the magnitude and novelty of its
works and their impact on man’s global future,
raises more issues for which past ethics, geared to
the direct dealings of man with his fellow men
within narrow horizons of space and time, has
left us unprepared.

20. Its axiom is that responsibility is a correlate of
power and must be commensurate with the
latter’s scope and that of its exercise.
The Imperative of Responsibility: Finding an Ethics for the Technological Age, Hans Jonas, U. Chic. Press, 1984
The lengthened reach of our deeds moves
responsibility, with no less than man’s fate for its
object, into the center of the ethical stage.
Accordingly, a theory of responsibility, lacking so
far, is set forth for both the private and the public
sphere.
For its discharge today, therefore, we need
lengthened foresight, that is, scientific futurology.

21. Consequently, an imaginative “heuristics of fear”
replacing the former projections of hope, must tell
us what is possibly at stake and what we must
beware of.
The Imperative of Responsibility: Finding an Ethics for the Technological Age, Hans Jonas, U. Chic. Press, 1984
Even at its best, however, such an extrapolation
from presently available data will always, in
certainty of prediction, fall short of the causal
pregnancy of our technological deeds.
The magnitude of those stakes, taken together with
the insufficiency of our predictive knowledge, leads
to the pragmatic rule to give the prophecy of doom
priority over the prophecy of bliss.

22. What we must avoid at all cost, is determined by what we must
preserve at all cost, and this in turn is predicated on the “image
of man” we entertain. Formerly, this image was enshrined in the
teachings of revealed religions. With their eclipse today, secular
reason must base the normative concept of man on a cogent, at
least persuasive, doctrine of general being: metaphysics [the
branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality] must
underpin ethics. Hence, a speculative attempt is made at such
underpinning of man’s duty to himself, his distant posterity, and
the plenitude of terrestrial life under his dominion.
The Imperative of Responsibility: Finding an Ethics for the Technological Age, Hans Jonas, U. Chic. Press, 1984
That attempt must brave the veto of reigning analytical theory
against all attempts of this kind and indeed cannot hope for
more than a tentative result. But dare it we must. A philosophy
of nature is to bridge the alleged chasm between scientifically
ascertainable “is” and morally binding “ought”.

23. The thus-gained conception of objective imperatives for man
in the scheme of things enables us to discriminate between
legitimate and illegitimate goal-settings to our Promethian
[boldly creative or defiantly original in behavior or actions]
power (a distinction encompassing but surpassing that
between realistic and unrealistic goals). This discrimination
is elaborated in assessing the potentials of “progress” up to
the most ambitious idea of it— contemporary utopianism as
represented by the Marxian alliance with technology.
Against the immodesty of its goals, which maximize the
inherent dangers of overstraining nature, the more modest
and fitting goal is set to save the survival and humanity of
man from the excesses of his own power.
The Imperative of Responsibility: Finding an Ethics for the Technological Age, Hans Jonas, U. Chic. Press, 1984

24. “A whole new dimension of ethical relevance”
The Imperative of Responsibility: Finding an Ethics for the Technological Age, Hans Jonas, U. Chic. Press, 1984
• Today, because of science and technology, individual power projects
into both time and space much further than ever before.
• Ethics is about the forces that guide human action. Science, especially
chemistry, has become completely intertwined with human action.
Accurate analysis of any human action in the developed world is
impossible absent an examination the influence of chemistry on that
action, from the way we communicate, educate ourselves, feed
ourselves, protect our health, and even to the way we procreate.
• Ethical principles need to be reinterpreted to recognize the reality of
the vast power we now have over life and the environment because
of science and technology.
• Thus, chemistry is inextricably intertwined with ethics! A healthy
education in chemistry should contain a significant analysis of
sustainability ethics.

25. The
Chemical
Goals for
Sustainability
Safe
Energy
Renewable
Feedstocks
Pollution
Reduction
New chemistry for
solar-to-electrical
or solar-to-
chemical energy
conversions
Economical
feedstocks for
chemical and
polymer
industries from
plants
Move the elemental composition of
technology closer to biochemistry to
eliminate persistent environmentally
mobile pollutants

26. • Historical analyses building from the anecdotal,
to the epidemiology, to the molecular level
understanding — importance.
• Toxicity testing as an integral component of
biochemical research — guidance.
• More interdisciplinary research involving
biochemists and toxicologists — synergy.
• An outright rejection of “spin” — obligation.
How might biochemists learn how to avoid
known toxicity/ecotoxicity in the design of new
products and processes?

27. Thank You
Any Questions???