Toxic Chemicals and Human Health: Introduction to Toxicology

Catalog description

The course examines how chemistry and human biology intersect to explain ways the body handles toxic chemicals following exposure. It introduces the principles of chemical toxicology with an emphasis on environmental toxicants known to cause adverse health effects. We follow the fate of toxicants-from absorption and distribution through metabolism/biotransformation, storage, and elimination-and analyze mechanisms of toxic action in specific target organs alongside the body's detoxification and clearance pathways. The course also surveys the history and development of toxicology as a science, explains dose-response relationships, and trains students to locate and interpret toxicological information from databases. Learning activities include case studies, hands-on work with databases and computational predictive tools, and collaborative problem-solving. Students should be familiar with general human biology.