Toxic Ignorance

Environmental Defense Fund (1997) Toxic ignorance The continuing absence of basic health testing for top-selling chemicals in the United States , www.environmentaldefense.org,... 

Roe, D., Pease, W., Florini, K. and Silbergeld, E. (1997) Toxic Ignorance. Washington Environmental Defense Fund. 

EDF (Environmental Defense Fund), Toxic Ignorance The Continuing Absence of Basic Health Testing for Top-Selling Chemicals in the United States, Environmental Defense Fund, Washington, DC, 1997. 

Ingestion of toxic materials occurs only through accidental or careless procedures in the industrial environment and, while it caimot be ignored, it is seldom a significant factor in exposure. 

Available refrigerants for various levels or conditions of operation may be toxic, flammable, irritating on exposure, hydroscopic, and expensive. These characteristics cannot be ignored, as large systems contain large quantities of refrigerant, and a leak or other failure can release a potentially serious condition into a building or process area. 

It is known that pesticide aerosols, formed when the pesticide steam settles on surfaces of miniscule droplets of water, are much more toxic than the steam form of the same pesticide. This circumstance turned out to be extremely important. Table 2.2 gives an idea of how dangerous pesticides are to humans when we ignore the role of factors such as atmospheric humidity. Data from... 

Despite the higher selectivity of enzymatic methyl transfer over chemical methylation, where toxic or hazardous reagents are often employed, such as methyl sulfonate and diazomethane, the synthetic applications of these enzymes have been largely ignored primarily as a result of high costs associated with the cofactor SAM. Recent efforts have been directed to in vivo methylation, where SAM may be regenerated inside cells. For example, methyl benzoate production was engineered in recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae and in vivo... 

The perhaps most important and easily ignored cause of secondary dysmotility is the drug-induced toxic type. Pharmaceuticals are important to consider, in particular those with anticholinergic and/or opioid properties [177]. In individuals with reduced reserve capacity of the gut, either due to concomitant disease or age, such drugs may... 

These considerations are included here because in the discussion that follows HC1 decay will be ignored, to facilitate the calculations. HC1 decay is also important when measuring PVC toxic potency, because the walls of exposure chambers are made of non-sorptive materials, where such decay is minimised. In this connection it is worth pointing out that the highest concentration of HCl found when fire fighters entered buildings actually on fire was ca. 280 ppm [25, 26]. 

Throughout recent decades, efforts were made to limit or ban biological weapons, but several nations ignored the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Biologic and Toxic Weapons and their Destruction. Between 1975 and 1983, Laos and Cambodia came under attack by planes and helicopters that delivered Yellow Rain suspected to contain lethal T-2 mycotoxins. 

Yes, but with caution. Reference has been made several times to the fundamental biological similarities of mammalian species, and to the expected similarities in response to chemical toxicity in animals and human beings. These expectations have been borne out in a large proportion of those cases in which there has been an opportunity to obtain toxicity data in both humans and animals, so that it would be imprudent to ignore the results of cancer bioassays. At the same time these results need to be carefully scrutinized, because they can easily mislead. 

Let us skip by the question of the adequacy of the animal tests used to identify these agents. The general quality of the animal test is obviously of great importance in the overall evaluation and these questions cannot be ignored in the case of cancer bioassays any more than they can in any other type of toxicity test. But the more interesting questions arise when we move beyond the question of study quality. 

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