Host: The Japanese Society of Toxicology
Name : The 49th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Toxicology
Date : June 30, 2022 - July 02, 2022
Anthropocene is proposed as a term for contemporary geologic time scale. It can be recognized as an era in which the earth has been shrunken relative to rapidly growing human activities. In this talk, I would like to discuss about new challenges for toxicology (in its broad sense) in Anthropocene, taking another relatively new concept of Planetary Health. Planetary Health refers to two health, i.e., health for earth and ecosystems on it, and health for human and its civilization, identifying and quantifying the way in which both health are dependent with each other and seeks sustainable relationship for two health.
The shrunken earth is important for toxicology in two respects. First, it allows chemicals released into environment may diffuse or be diluted but not instantly extinguish and stay for some time. Then, their environmental distribution/fate in various temporal/spatial scales in relation to the distribution of living organisms in ecosystems are crucial in determining the toxicological importance of chemicals. Second, not only human but also plants and animals are living on the shrunken earth, exerting their impact on human species through various type of ecosystem services. Of course, toxicological effects on these living organisms matter by hampering their health and lives. At the same time, the effects may impact on human health and society through the deterioration of the ecosystem services. Both of these issues would require toxicologist, while acknowledging experimental research, to utilize mathematical models to describe environmental chemistry and ecosystems and to do data collection in the real field monitoring. Thus, toxicology in the Anthropocene will be very busy but very attractive field as it has been.
