Future Considerations for Environmental and Human Health

The vast increase in public awareness of the potential of chemicals to cause harmful effects and the propensity of the print and electronic media to fan the flames of controversy in this area make certain the continued need for toxicologists. We need to ask what they will be doing during the next few decades compared to what they have been doing in the immediate past. 

A Textbook of Modern Toxicology, Third Edition, edited by Ernest Hodgson ISBN 0-471 -26508-X Copyright 2004 John Wiley Sons, Inc. 

It should be emphasized that all of these activities proceed simultaneously, and that increased emphasis and interest in any particular area is often preceded by the development of new techniques—for example, the tremendous increase in specificity and sensitivity of chemical methods has proceeded simultaneously with the introduction of molecular biologic techniques into studies of mechanisms of toxic action. 

The success of the project to describe the human genome along with progress in the definition of polymorphisms in human xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes and other proteins will certainly lead to the ability to define populations and individuals at increased risk from a particular chemical insult. This ability will be extended and put on a more mechanistic basis by advances in the new disciplines of proteomics and metabonomics. 

Change can be expected in almost every aspect of both the applied and the fundamental aspects of toxicology. Risk communication, risk assessment, hazard and exposure assessment, in vivo toxicity, development of selective chemicals, in vitro toxicology, and biochemical and molecular toxicology will all change, as will the integration of all of these areas into new paradigms of risk assessment and of the ways in which chemicals affect human health and the environment. 

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