ABSTRACT
Environmental toxicology is the study of the effects of pollutants upon the structure and function of ecological systems. Environmental toxicology takes and assimilates from a variety of disciplines. Terrestrial and aquatic ecologists, chemists, molecular biologists, geneticists, and mathematicians play an important role in the evaluation of the impacts of chemicals on biological systems. Critical to the field are data analysis and the discovery of patterns of data that are of varied types and structures. As a discipline, environmental toxicology is relatively new. As of 2016, the 37th annual meeting sponsored by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) in North America on environmental toxicology was held. There are many types of interactions that make up the field of environmental toxicology. This introduction also presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides the background knowledge so that the short- and long-term effects of chemical pollution can be evaluated.
