A polymorphism for the phase I drug-metabolizing enzyme, flavincontaining monooxygenase isoform 2 (FMO2), encoding either truncated inactive protein, FMO2X472 (FMO2.2A), or full-length active enzyme, FMO2Q472 (FMO2.1), is known and exhibits significant interethnic differences in allelic frequency. FMO2 is the major or sole FMO isoform expressed in the lung of most mammals, including nonhuman pr...

A polymorphism for the phase I drug-metabolizing enzyme, flavincontaining monooxygenase isoform 2 (FMO2), encoding either truncated inactive protein, FMO2X472 (FMO2.2A), or full-length active enzyme, FMO2Q472 (FMO2.1), is known and exhibits significant interethnic differences in allelic frequency. FMO2 is the major or sole FMO isoform expressed in the lung of most mammals, including nonhuman pr...

The question of whether appreciable amounts of ethanol can become absorbed into the bloodstream through intact skin arises from time to time in connection with drunk-driving litigation (1). However, to produce an elevated blood-ethanol concentration (BEC), the amounts of alcohol taken up through the skin must exceed the amounts eliminated by metabolism in the liver and excretion in the breath a...

In the wake of the North Carolina state legislature’s July 2012 vote to legalize new oil and gas exploration, the state is poised to join the ranks of others already tapping into shale gas deposits with the help of hydraulic fracturing (fracking). But public and environmental health concerns, particularly those related to air emissions and drinking water safety and security, have sparked contro...

One hundred years ago, Warren established for the first time a quantitative link between dose and time while studying the toxicity of sodium chloride in Daphnia magna (Straus). During this century, many toxicologists in different contexts returned to this idea, which has become known as Haber’s Rule of inhalation toxicology. Most attempts to explore this relationship ended in frustration becaus...

After the Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout on 20 April 2010, fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico were closed while off icials screened seafood for unsafe levels of hydrocarbon contaminants. But when federal agencies began reopening fisheries in the summer of 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Admin istration’s (FDA) affirmation of seafood safety was met with distrust, in part because some felt the agen...

volume 119 | number 3 | March 2011 • Environmental Health Perspectives The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) joins with the entire environmental health sciences community in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Society of Toxicology (SOT). This issue of Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) contains several articles in the field of toxicology and includes the post...

Clinicians currently diagnose Parkinson’s disease (PD) by the presence of tremor and impaired movement. However, PD patients also suffer from a wide range of nonmotor symptoms, some of which may appear years before the motor signs. In this issue of EHP, a national group of experts reviews the current body of research on these premotor symptoms, which may offer clues to better understanding the ...

For several years in the mid-1970s, the Society of Toxicology (SOT) had been studying the feasibility of accrediting toxicology laboratories and/or certifying the competency of individual toxicologists. Committee discussions were held, reports were issued in 1973 and 1974, and a proposal was developed by the spring of 1976. At the annual SOT business meeting in March 1976, the membership voted ...

After the perhaps naive optimism surrounding science during the post-war period, there has been a clear backlash fuelled by widening scientific illiteracy and fears about nuclear war, environmental degradation and so on. These fears have found fertile ground in the general anti-expert, anti-establishment sentiments that have increased in the past decades, and on which several civic movements ha...