Assessment of human health risks of environmental agents has often been limited to consideration of the potential for the agent to cause cancer or general systemic toxicity after long-term exposure. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) is increasingly moving toward the development of integrated assessments, which consider all potential health end points including developmental to...

This chapter provides a review and evaluation of the literature pertinent to joint toxic action of the mixture and its components. 2.1 Mixture of Concern Toxicological data or PBPK models were not available for the complete mixture of concern. Toxicological and mechanistic data, but no PBPK models, were available for all of the binary mixtures, but were limited. For some binary mixtures, few or...

Since a report by Spyker et al.,1) a number of studies have shown various behavioral changes after perinatal exposure to methylmercury in open field tests,2) shock avoidance learning') and operant learning.4) Taste aversion learning is considered a useful examination in behavioral teratology.5) It requires no special behavioral equipments and seems to be less affected by motor dysfunction than ...

A highly sensitive and selective method has been developed for the determination of methylmercury in biological specimens and NIST Standard Reference Materials (SRMs). The procedure involves microwave extraction with acetic acid, followed by derivatization and headspace solid-phase microextraction (SPME) with a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-coated silica fiber. Optimization of conditions includin...

Methylmercury is a globally distributed pollutant and upper trophic level aquatic fauna are at particularly high risk of exposure. Although methylmercury is known to have a number of neurological and developmental effects, relatively little is known about effects on endocrine disruption and reproduction in aquatic fauna, particularly in response to chronic exposure at low concentrations. We exp...

BACKGROUND Immune dysregulation associated with mercury has been suggested, although data in the general population are lacking. Chronic exposure to low levels of methylmercury (organic) and inorganic mercury is common, such as through fish consumption and dental amalgams. OBJECTIVE We examined associations between mercury biomarkers and antinuclear antibody (ANA) positivity and titer strengt...

Selenium (Se) supplementation in the nutritionally relevant range counteracts methylmercury (MeHg) toxicity. Since Se tends to be abundant in fish, MeHg exposures alone may not provide an accurate index of risk from fish consumption. Molar ratios of MeHg:Se in the diets and Hg:Se in tissues of exposed individuals may provide a more accurate index. This experiment compared MeHg toxicity in relat...

We describe a novel genetic screen that is performed by transfecting every individual clone of an expression clone collection into a separate population of cells in a high-throughput mode. We combined high-throughput functional genomics with experimental validation to discover human genes that ameliorate cytotoxic responses of neuronal HT-22 cells upon exposure to oxidative stress. A collection...

consumption of fish has been associated with reduced performance on tests of neurologic function in children, including tests of cogni-tive development, attention and behavior, and motor skills. A comprehensive review of the mercury literature conducted by the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on the Toxicological Effects of Methylmercury concluded that, based on the evidence available,...