 Toxicity of Heavy MetalsGabriel Mustatea and Elena Loredana Ungureanu A chapter in Environmental Impact and Remediation of Heavy Metals from IntechOpen Abstract: Heavy metals are elements who exist naturally in the environment, but rapid urbanization and industrialization led to increased levels of these metals. These metals can reach the human body through food, water or air, where they have the property to accumulate in various tissues and organs for long periods of time and to produce serious effects on certain organs and the proper functioning of the body. Studies have also shown that heavy metals can have important effects, including on plants or animals. Their toxicity is dependent on factors such as dose, route of exposure, time of exposure, level of concentration, as well as age, gender, genetics, and nutritional status of exposed individuals. There is a growing interest from researchers to detect various physical, physical-chemical or microbiological methods to reduce or eliminate the presence of these metals, especially from surface or wastewater, which are mainly responsible for food contamination. This chapter present the main characteristics of heavy metals, the sources of contamination of exposure, as well as their toxicity on some environmental segments and especially on living organisms. Keywords: contamination; heavy metals; human health; sources of exposure; toxicity (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:255177 DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.102441 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from IntechOpen |
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