Preface

Nowadays, health problems associated with the environment continue to be a major source of concern worldwide. Our global society needs to establish actions that will considerably reduce the real and potentially hazardous factors in the environment that can result in health risks for humans and other living species. Despite the progress in science, technology, and industrialization making immense positive contributions to health, the interaction be‐ tween environmental risk and health is often intricate and can involve a variety of not only social and economic but also lifestyle factors. Public health depends on the good quality of environmental factors such as air, water, soil, and food, among others. However, the princi‐ pal or even the ultimate challenge in environmental public health is to understand the risks that modern societies possess. They are exposed to heterogeneous xenobiotics, which are continuously released into human habitats, deliberately, inadvertently, or by nonregulated industrial discharges.

Environmental health, as a concept, is not easy to define. In this regard, according to the World Health Organization, the definition of *environmental health* is "all the physical, chemi‐ cal, and biological factors external to a person, and all the related factors impacting behav‐ iors. It encompasses the assessment and control of those environmental factors that can potentially affect health. It is targeted toward preventing disease and creating health-sup‐ portive environments…" However, for the National Environmental Health Association, this concept refers to "the protection against environmental factors that may adversely impact human health or the ecological balances essential to long-term human health and environ‐ mental quality, whether in the natural or man-made environment." Finally, the definition of *environmental health* according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Science also involves the criterion that "the social environment encompasses lifestyle factors like diet and exercise, socioeconomic status, and other societal influences that may affect health."

In general terms, our health and the health of many other species are negatively affected by five broad categories of environmental hazards, namely electromagnetic fields (produced by power lines, electrical wiring, appliances, cell phones, computers, and televisions), radiation (including nuclear fallout from weapons testing, fission materials from nuclear power plants, leaking radioactive disposal sites, flying at high altitudes, and mammograms and xrays), toxic chemicals (such as some organochlorines, phthalates, polybrominated flame re‐ tardants, perfluorinated substances, bisphenol-A, and several toxic metals, among others, which have been shown to have endocrine-disrupting properties), and, finally, soil mineral depletion as a complex environmental hazard.

By definition, *risk assessment* can be considered the quantitative and/or qualitative determi‐ nation of a risk related to both a well-defined situation and a recognized threat (i.e., a haz‐ ard), and thus, health risk assessment includes variants such as risk as the type and severity of response, with or without a probabilistic context. In this context, risk-based methods play a strategic role in identifying and ranking the adverse responses or the structure of the ef‐ fects of exposure against environmental factors.

This book, *Environmental Health Risk - Hazardous Factors to Living Species*, is intended to pro‐ vide a set of practical discussions and relevant tools for making risky decisions that require actions to reduce environmental health risk against environmental factors that may adverse‐ ly impact human health or ecological balances. We aimed to compile information from di‐ verse sources into a single volume to give some real examples extending concepts of those hazardous factors to living species that may stimulate new research ideas and trends in the relevant fields.

Although we are dealing with many diverse topics, we have tried to compile this "raw ma‐ terial" into three major parts in search of clarity and order. First, in General Background and Remarks, readers will find two chapters with background information about the nature of pesticides, their history, their classification, their risks, and their effects on health and envi‐ ronment, as well as general aspects of environmental pollution by metals as a serious prob‐ lem in many areas of the planet, with a special emphasis on the assessment of metal bioaccumulation and toxicity. Second, in Validated Methods and New Models of Evalua‐ tion, we have included two chapters on, first, problems with the use, analysis, and interpre‐ tation of results obtained through the comet assay in human buccal cells and, second, a new system of hierarchical limit values to protect soil environments, food chains, and human health against contamination that reveals the areas where the soil does not meet the soil quality standards and where the human health is at risk. Finally, Specific Evaluation of Some Environmental Toxicants encloses six chapters describing specific examples of toxi‐ cants with potential risks to living species, such as humans. The first chapter describes the genotoxic properties of bisphenols and mycotoxins, which are prominent environmental contaminates and potential carcinogens. The second chapter reviews the toxic effects of dif‐ ferent phthalate esters and bisphenols and their availability in the environment, mecha‐ nisms and modes of actions, biotransformation, and reproductive effects. Then, the next two chapters describe, respectively, the relationship between chronic exposure to coal and coal ash particles and cancer and a novel procedure for the early detection of previous asbestos exposure, its relation with mesothelioma, and chemoprevention of asbestos-related cancers. The last two chapters review, respectively, the accumulation of organic pollutants in the en‐ vironment, with a special reference to the mechanism in the causation of type 2 diabetes mellitus, and risks that amoxicillin poses to the environment, focusing on detailed ecotoxici‐ ty testing using a wide range of aquatic organisms to fully understand the environmental toxicity of this antimicrobial product, and how it may affect both aquatic and terrestrial en‐ vironments.

Many researchers have contributed to the publication of this book. Given the fast pace of new scientific publications shedding light on the matter, this book will probably be outdated very soon. We regard this as a positive and healthy fact. The editors hope that this book will continue to meet the expectations and needs of all those interested in the environmental risk assessment field of study.

#### **Marcelo L. Larramendy and Sonia Soloneski**

School of Natural Sciences and Museum, National University of La Plata, La Plata, Argentina **General Background and Remarks**
