Study of the Mechanism of Action of Toxicants in the Environment

The course "Study of mechanisms of action of environmental toxins" aims at providing basic concepts and principles of action by which environmental toxicants exert their negative effects on human health and on the environment.
Students will be provided - for each of the toxicant discussed in the course - with notions on the routes of exposure , their metabolism in humans and in other living organisms, their mechanism of toxic action on the target organ with particular attention to epigenetic effects. We will also present and discuss issues related to environmental toxicity events with national and international significance (examples: health effects from pollution of particulate pollution in large cities, dioxin in Seveso, the Taranto case, nuclear accidents: Chernobyl /Fukushima).

The course aims to provide students with a general knowledge of the genetic, epigenetic and molecular mechanisms with which environmental xenobiotics influence patho-physiological processes, both at the cellular and tissue level and at the level of the single organs and of the organism in its complexity. At the end of the course the student will have acquired the necessary knowledge to evaluate the complexity of the interaction between xenobiotics and higher organisms as a result of processes, interconnected with each other, that occur at different level.
The student will also acquire sufficient terminology and notions to review the scientific literature in the field of molecular and cellular toxicology.