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This book focuses on the impact of environmental chemicals on human health. Its coverage includes metals contaminating the environment, persistent organic pollutants (POPs), air pollution and endocrine disruptors. Harmful consumer products, workplace exposure, cosmetics, microplastic waste are described. Since most chemical substances are related to degenerative disorders and other communicable diseases, the proposed models of disease are analyzed, including cancer and psychiatry disorders. To provide an understanding of the mechanisms of diseases due to exposure, the book also covers basic background knowledge in genetics and epigenetic mechanisms. Oxidative stress and antioxidant mechanisms of the body are presented and how chronic inflammation and oxidative stress leads to disease. Finally, the role of a well-balanced diet and ingredients in the diet which prevent disease as well as the mechanisms of prevention are emphasized.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Dna Hypomethylation And Human Diseases.- Chapter 3: Reactive Oxygen Species.- Chapter 4: Mercury.- Chapter 5: Persistent Organic Pollutants.- Chapter 6: Endocrine Disruptors.- Chapter 7: Molecular Models Implicated In Ageing Disorders And The Development of Cancer.- Chapter 8: The Food As A Complex Antioxidant System.- Chapter 9: Reprogramming.
About the author
Aikaterini Salavoura is a pediatrician with subspeciality in immunology and allergy working in Children’s Hospital "Αgia Sophia" in Athens, Greece. Her PhD thesis at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens involved clinical and molecular investigation of genetic syndromes (1995). She continued her studies on molecular biology in Great Ormond Street, London in 2000, supported by a scholarship from the Greek National Foundation of Scholarships. She obtained a MSc on environmental health from Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2015. She studied allergy at St Thomas Hospital, London and worked for two years in the UK as a consultant in allergy. She currently works as a consultant in a Unit of Pediatric Allergy at the 1st Department of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine of the National Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has had a teaching role in the training of specializing physicians and nurses in the Children’s Hospital "Αgia Sophia" in Athens, Greece and she participated in the publication of local professional and public journals voluntarily.
