BACKGROUND Loperamide is an over-the-counter, inexpensive, antidiarrheal opioid that can produce life-threatening toxicity at high concentrations. CASE REPORT 1: A 28-year-old man with a history of depression and substance abuse disorder (SUD) presented to the emergency department (ED) with shortness of breath and lightheadedness. He ingested large amounts of loperamide daily. The patient's ini...

Fentanyl is a potent, short-acting narcotic analgesic widely used as a surgical anesthetic and for the control of pain when administered in the form of a transdermal patch. The success of the patch can be attributed to fentanyl's low molecular weight and its highly lipophilic nature, which enables it to be readily absorbed through the skin and subsequently distributed throughout the body. Over ...

BACKGROUND This is the 26th Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC; http://www. aapcc.org ) National Poison Data System (NPDS). During 2008, 60 of the nation's 61 US poison centers uploaded case data automatically. The median upload time was 24 [7.2, 112] (median [25%, 75%]) minutes creating a real-time national exposure and information database and surveilla...

In the last issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Medical Toxicology, Dr. Reza Afshari raised the question of what are the best scientific areas of focus of toxicology for “low income countries and how such research might be achieved (1). South-south collaboration, in which developing countries share resources, was one of the proposed solutions. Rather than limit discussion to “low income” coun...

‘Contamination’ is a comparative term. In Britain at least, contaminants are trace substances; in the context of food they are distinguished from additives by whether or not there is an intention that the substances should be present when the food is consumed or prepared for consumption. Contaminants may be of natural or of technological origin: and technological contaminants may be direct or i...

A class of compounds known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs)-flame-retardant additives used in high-impact plastics, foams, and textiles-has recently sparked concerns among environmental health scientists. PBDEs are part of a superfamily of related toxic compounds known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Limited evidence suggests they may be associated with health effects includin...

Iodinated X-ray contrast media (ICM), used medically to highlight soft tissues, are considered generally safe, and patients excrete 95% of the dose within 24 hours, making them a valuable tool in medical imaging. But a new study shows that excreted ICM react with chloramine and chlorine at water treatment plants to form toxic iodinated disinfection by-products (iodo-DBPs). 1 " ICM are definitel...

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The question of how one should choose among competing explanations (models) of observed data is at the core of science. Model comparison is ubiquitous and arises, for example, when a toxicologist must decide between two dose-response models or when a biochemist needs to determine which of a set of enzyme-kinetics models best accounts for observed data. Over the decades, a number of criteria tha...

With the speed of industrialization in today's global community, the costs of disparities in environmental health and risk assessment can be dangerously high in developing countries without broad, stable regulatory and protective measures in place. Addressing capacity-building problems will depend largely upon the implementation of proactive measures within the borders of these developing natio...