EDITORIAL Chemical research in toxicology A new ACS journal that will be important to many ES&T readers premiered this year. Chemical Research in Toxicology, edited by Lawrence J. Marnett of Wayne State University, will focus on research that employs chemical methodology to study how exposure to toxic chemical agents causes organisms to malfunction and ultimately die. Although not an environmental toxicology journal, Chemical Research in Toxicology will publish basic research papers that cover mechanisms of toxic effects, which will no doubt be of interest to environmental scientists who are concerned with the same chemicals in applied settings. Toxicology is a discipline that has always been an important part of environmental science and technology, but recently its importance has grown. Toxicology plays an essential role in the evaluation of chemicals in the environment and their associated risks-both to man and to other “critters.” It is often stated that the knowledge of dose-response relationships represents the most uncertain component of the assessment of risks of chemicals in the environment. This perception is partly attributable to the lack of fundamental knowledge on the effects of chemicals on man and other species. As the use of toxicology for medical, regulatory, and legal purposes grows, it is apparent that the need for basic research in toxicology is greater than ever. Moreover, the level of sophistication within the discipline continues to rise. Now it is not sufficient to extrapolate gross effects of a chemical substance from a test organism to another species. An understanding of pharmacokinetics, including rates of absorption, bioaccumulation, and metabolism is essential for understanding the precision of such extrapolations. It is also important to know about the metabolites of toxicants
0013-936X/88/0922-0851$01.50/0 0 1988 American Chemical Society
(which in some cases pose a more direct threat to the organism than the original compound), the protection mechanisms that exist in the test species, and the relationships between the test species’ protection mechanisms and similar mechanisms in other species. More knowledge is needed on the effects of combinations of chemicals, the role of nutrition in toxicology, and the scientific basis of structure-activity correlations. Chemical toxicology will continue to be an important component of environmental research and management. Although it is our editorial policy to leave the publication of fundamental papers to Chemical Research in Toxicology and similar journals, ES&T will be increasingly receptive to articles that describe how toxic effects are manifest in the natural environment and that cover areas of applied biochemistry within our sphere of interest. We applaud the creation of Chemical Research in Toxicology and encourage our readers to examine its pages for relevance to their own works. In this issue of ES&T we have printed the table of contents for the May/June issue of Chemical Research in Toxicology (on the inside back cover) to illustrate the types of papers likely to be included in upcoming editions. In the future our editors also will be alert to the publication of papers of unusual significance to the environmental research community and will publish notes about them in the “Currents” section of ES&T We predict that Chemical Research in Toxicology will become a respected member of the stable of ACS journals and will be of special value to ES&T readers,
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