Foundations of Ecotoxicology

The term ecotoxicology derives from the words ecology and toxicology and identifies an area of study concerning with the harmful effects of chemicals within the context of ecology. Ecotoxicology is a discipline whose main goals are the study of the occurrence, distribution, fate and harmful effects of chemicals towards organism at different levels of the ecological hierarchy, from the sub-individual up to ecosystem level. The course Principles of Ecotoxicology aims to provide the students with a general overview on the main issues in the field of ecotoxicology. First, it will deal with the main classes of environmental contaminants, with particular emphasis on the so-called emerging contaminants. Then, topics related to the occurrence, the distribution and the fate of such contaminants in diverse environmental matrices will be elucidated, including the dynamics regulating the process of accumulation and the metabolism of xenobiotics within organisms. Lastly, after introducing the concept of toxicity, the main experimental approaches used to assess the toxicity of environmental contaminants towards both aquatic and terrestrial organisms will be illustrated.