دانلود کتاب سم شناسی محیطی و بیوشیمیایی

The idea to compile this book is closely linked to a new course that was offered by the University of Calgary for the first time in the winter term of 2016. This course, in turn, came into existence because of critical conversations between JG and RT about the way that many societies around the world deal with toxins that are inadvertently or deliberately released into the global environment. To this end, mankind has effectively become a global biogeochemical force (e.g. mankind has already been changing the chemical composition of the earth’s atmosphere), which prompted a Nobel laureate to refer to the age that we currently live in as the ‘anthropocene’ (anthropos = human; cene = geological epoch). This perspective or realization challenges the mantra that “the solution to pollution is dilution” and prompted us to develop a new interdisciplinary senior-level course which was initially entitled ‘Biochemical Toxicology’ and eventually changed to ‘Concepts in Biochemical Toxicology’. The overall goal of this course was and is to focus on the diverse biomolecular mechanisms by which natural toxins that are produced by organisms, as well as organic and inorganic pollutants, adversely affect cell function at the single-cell level (microbes), at the multicellular level (animals and humans) as well as the organism–environment interface (entire ecosystems). Owing to the required expertise at the interface between chemistry and biology, the delivery of this interdisciplinary new course involved faculty from the Department of Chemistry and from Biological Sciences. The book draws from the lessons that we have learned by organizing and delivering this course which involved focusing on chemical events that unfold immediately after a toxin is released into the environment to capture the student’s attention early and to provide important context to topics that we covered. Thus, this book is not intended to be a thorough introduction to biochemical toxicology since there are a few recent textbooks that have this flavour. Rather, this book should be of interest for students who are curious to uncover the (bio)chemical basis and mechanisms that are at the heart of the societal problems that are intricately linked to the economy and the associated improper management and disposition of organic and inorganic toxins. Since the first target of any toxin release is the immediate area that we live in, any toxin release has the potential to damage the very ecosystem that supports us, which will then propagate up the food chain. We should therefore not be surprised to learn that pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and premature death in the world today. Although it is estimated that 9 million premature deaths are attributed to pollution-related diseases in 2015, it is what we don’t know in terms of how chemical pollution adversely affects human health (Landrigan, Fuller et al. 2017) in the form of ‘ticking time-bombs’ that is particularly worrisome. We have to recognize that we are just now embarking on the journey to unravel the complex mechanisms by which pollutants first result in subtle changes to our local ecological habitat, which may eventually result in adverse human health effects. Given the need to find new ways to experimentally address this problem, this textbook serves as a starting point for senior students to further explore this challenging frontier.