One of the central concepts in toxicology is that the internal dose of a substance informs on the disposition of the organism to adverse biological effects. This notion is also well-known in fish toxicology and the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME) of chemicals found in the environment has been studied for many years. The ADME approach to understanding toxicity has also been applied to engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) in fish (Handy et al. 2008). However, any biological effect of a foreign material or toxic substance would also depend on whereabouts in the body the test substance is accumulated and the damage it does to the internal organs at that location (s). For the pathologists, this aspect is the study of target organ pathology (Turton and Hooson 1998). The use of histopathology in fundamental ecotoxicological research is long-established and is beyond the scope here (see reviews by Handy et al. 2002a, DiGiulio and Hinton 2008). However, fish histopathology has been used as a biomarker of exposure and as a biomonitoring tool in ecosystems (Handy et al. 2002a). The application of histopathological biomarkers in field situations presents a number of practical advantages over other monitoring approaches. These include the ease of sample collection and storage, the ability to estimate effects on many body systems and cell types from the same fish, as well as the opportunity to examine very small fish that could be too small to dissect for biochemistry (Hinton and Laurén 1990). Several studies have shown that histopathologic biomarkers are very sensitive, and can elucidate toxicant aetiology consistent with the …
جنان عدنان عبد اللطيف البيروتي | Genan Adnan Abdul-Bairuty | 3945