editorial environmental toxicology in addressing public...

EditorialEnvironmental Toxicology in Addressing Public HealthChallenges in East Asia

How-Ran Guo,1,2 Zailina Hashim,3 Shih-Bin Su,4 and Jochen Bundschuh5

1Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 704, Taiwan2Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, National Cheng Kung University Hospital, Tainan 704, Taiwan3Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Selangor, Malaysia4Department of Occupational Medicine, Chi-Mei Medical Center, Tainan 710, Taiwan5Deputy Vice-Chancellor’s Office (Research and Innovation), Research and Innovation and Academic Division and Faculty of Health,Engineering and Sciences, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia

Correspondence should be addressed to How-Ran Guo; [email protected]

Received 18 March 2015; Accepted 18 March 2015

Copyright © 2015 How-Ran Guo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Environmental toxicology is a multidisciplinary domain ofscience, which occupies an important niche, overlappingthe fields of toxicology, environmental health, and publicpolicy. While studying the adverse health effects of chemical,biological, and physical agents on living organisms in theecosystems, environmental toxicology focuses on humansand therefore plays an important role in addressing publichealth challenges. Over the years, environmental toxicologyresearch has been providing tools and scientific evidenceto policy-makers and the public in preventing substantiallygreater environmental degradation, including adverse humanhealth impacts.

In East Asia, with the increasing number of environ-mental problems, there is a pressing need for immediatehealth solutions, and environmental toxicology is expected toincreasingly play an important role. More fundamental andapplied research must be carried out to deal with the publichealth challenges in terms of environmental problems and toincrease the body of scientific knowledge in this field. Whileenvironmental toxicology receives increasing attention andshows significant growth, the number of articles publishedin international journals on environmental toxicology is stillrelatively limited. As society changes due to introduction ofnew technologies and the challenge of sustainable develop-ment in the face of increased human population, especially inthe East Asian region, the role of environmental toxicology in

enlightened public health and public policy will become evenmore important.

Air pollution from both natural and anthropogenicsources now constitutes one of the greatest public healthchallenges in East Asia at the present time. N. F. Suhaimiand J. Jalaludin conducted a search of journal articles andidentified seven studieswhich used biomarkers to understandthe association between air particles exposure and the devel-opment of respiratory problems resulting from the damagein the respiratory system. While finding the application ofbiomarkers in epidemiological studies of health effects causedby air particles in both environmental and occupationalhealth to be inchoate, they concluded that biomarkers canunravel the complexity of the connection between exposureto air particles and respiratory health. N. A. M. N. Rawi etal. carried out a cross-sectional study among Malay childrenin Selangor to determine the indoor air quality (IAQ) and itsassociation with respiratory health. They measured the levelsof particulate matters (PM), volatile organic compounds(VOCs), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO

2), air

velocity (AV), temperature, and relative humidity and foundthat abnormality of FVC% among children was associatedwith the concentrations of PM

2.5and CO, while abnormality

of FEV1% among children was associated with the concen-tration of CO. In addition, they found that wheezing wasassociated with concentrations of PM

2.5, PM10, and CO.

Hindawi Publishing CorporationBioMed Research InternationalVolume 2015, Article ID 920518, 2 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/920518

2 BioMed Research International

M. Watanabe et al. also studied the effects of air pollutionon the pulmonary function of school children but targetedat the Asian dust storm (ADS). They identified seven ADSdays from 2012 to 2013 in the Shimane Prefecture of Japan andobserved a larger change in morning peak expiratory flow(PEF) in children after ADS exposure in 2012 (−8.17 L/minversus −1.17 L/min). Using airborne particles collected onADS days to stimulate THP-G8 cells, they found interleukin-8 transcriptional activity was also higher when particlescollected in 2012 were used. Therefore, they argue that theinfluence of ADS on pulmonary function of children may berelated to interleukin-8 production.

J.-F. Zou et al. studied the health effects of CO but focusedon patients suffering from CO poisoning. They conducteda study in the Shandong Province of China and found thata positive Babinski reflex was an independent predictor fordelayed neuropsychiatric sequelae (DNS). With a specificityof 88.6% and a negative predictive value of 97.3%, thissign is particularly useful for identifying patients with alow risk of developing DNS. Also targeting neurotoxicity,O. Isildak et al. studied 𝛽-N-oxalyl-L-𝛼,𝛽-diaminopropionicacid (ODAP), a toxin that can cause spastic paraplegia. Theydeveloped a novel potentiometric sensor based on ionophore(Cd(NH

2CH2CH2OCH2CH2OCH2CH2NH2)Ag3(CN)5), and

detection limit was 2 × 10−6mol L−1, with a response timeshorter than 6 seconds. The sensor exhibits good operationalstability for more than one week in dry conditions at 4–6∘Candhas a reproducible and stable response during continuouswork for more than 10 hours.

Metal and arsenic contamination of water sources alsoconstitute important environmental problems in East Asiaand can have severe impacts on humans. A. Waseem et al.reviewed the heavy metal contamination in several areas ofPakistan in recent years, including arsenic, cadmium, lead,chromium, nickel, copper, manganese, iron, and zinc. Theyfound those metals have affected the drinking water quality,ecological environment, and food chain, which poses seriousthreats to public health. J.-W. Huang et al. focused their studyon arsenic and evaluated its associationwith diabetesmellitus(DM) in Cambodia. They found that drinking water witharsenic levels above 907.25𝜇g/L and having skin lesions ofarsenicosis were associated with a nearly twofold increasein the risk of DM. However, the increases did not reachstatistical significance, most likely because of the small casenumber. The meta-analysis carried out by T.-C. Sung et al.has provided amore comprehensive picture of the associationbetween arsenic exposure and DM. They identified 38 rele-vant studies, of which the 32 studies on the ingestion routeshowed a significant association between arsenic exposureand DM. While the heterogeneity among the studies mayaffect the results, they concluded that ingested arsenic isassociated with the development of DM.

The papers of this special issue comprise critical and newareas of research and recent advances on challenging issuesin different fields of environmental toxicology.They includedcontributions from cutting edge researches in environmentaltoxicology that have been recently conducted in the EastAsian region and selected papers from works presented inthe third conference organized by the East Asia Chapter of

the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology(ISEE) held in Kuala Lumpur in 2012. ISEE’s membershipis open to environmental epidemiologists and other scien-tists such as environmental toxicologists, and the biannualconference of the East Asia Chapter provides a forum fordiscussions, critical reviews, collaborations, and education onissues of environmental exposures and their human healtheffects, focusing on local interests.

How-Ran GuoZailina Hashim

Shih-Bin SuJochen Bundschuh

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