Toxicology of Essential and Xenobiotic Metals

This book explores how metals like cadmium, mercury, lead, aluminium, manganese, and chromium can harm our health, whether through short-term or long-term exposure. It covers symptoms ranging from immediate nausea to long-term issues like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Understanding how these metals interact with our bodies is crucial for identifying their harmful effects. The book, divided into 11 chapters, provides straightforward explanations about how these metals affect our health, making it useful for anyone interested in understanding how metals can impact the environment as well as human and animal health.

Dr.João Batista Teixeira da Rocha, born in Rio de Janeiro - Brazil, in 1964, is a biochemistry professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM), Brazil. He earned his PhD in 1996 and has since focused on studying how certain chemicals interact with our bodies. His research, spanning over 750 scientific papers, explores the toxicity and potential benefits of simple organoselenium compounds. Rocha’s work helps us understand how these compounds affect our health and could lead to new treatments.

Dr. Michael Aschner’s research and expertise are in the field of neurobiology and physiology of astrocytes. For the past 30 years, he’s focused on how metals like mercury, manganese, and uranium enter and move around in our brains, causing damage. Using different models like worms, cells, and mice, his lab explores brain mechanisms. Dr. Aschner is a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, with over 1000 scientific papers and 100 book chapters.

Dr. Pablo Andrei Nogara, born in Ijuí - Brazil in 1991, is a chemist with expertise in biochemistry. He obtained his degrees at the Federal University of Santa Maria, focusing on organic chemistry and computational methods. Currently, he is a professor at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology Sul-rio-grandense (IFSul). Nogara’s research explores the biological effects of mercury and selenium, particularly their interactions with thio- and selenoproteins, applying advanced computational techniques like docking simulations, ADMET properties, and quantum chemistry calculations.