Environmental chemicals induce various types of adverse esects such as mutation, cancer, malformation and functional disorders. In the last 40 years, they have been investigated mainly for their genotoxic and hormone-like esects. They have been categorized as mutagens,carcinogens, teratogens, and endocrine disrupters etc. according to their modes of actions. A great attention has been paid to chemicals which induce DNA or chromosomal damage until now. Such damage in somatic cells and germ cells is considered to result in cancerand malformation, and in genetic disease, respectively.On the other hand, endocrine disrupters bind to receptors such as estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, aryl hydrocarbon receptor or thyroid hormonereceptor and modulate endocrine function, which also may lead to cancer or malformation, by receptor mediated gene expression. In the last few years, environmental chemicals have been investigated on the stand point of epigenetic disturbance. This has opened up new opportunities to investigate the mechanisms underlying the mutagenesis, carcinogenesis and teratogenesis.
展开▼
