Environmental Toxicology and Ecotoxicology

Environmental toxicology and ecotoxicology examine how chemical contaminants — particularly heavy metals and pesticides — enter living systems, accumulate through food webs, and disrupt biological function at the cellular and ecosystem level. In aquatic environments, where pollutants concentrate through runoff and industrial discharge, researchers track oxidative stress responses and molecular biomarkers in fish, invertebrates, and other organisms to translate biochemical signals into reliable assessments of ecological risk and water quality. A central challenge is determining at what concentrations and exposure durations a contaminant shifts from a manageable stressor to a driver of population decline or ecosystem destabilization. Active research is pushing toward more sensitive biomarker panels, better models for predicting how mixtures of contaminants interact, and frameworks that account for how climate change alters both pollutant behavior and organismal vulnerability.

Works

86,402

Total citations

1,682,868

Keywords

BioaccumulationOxidative StressBiomarkersEnvironmental Risk AssessmentAquatic OrganismsMetal Toxicity