ABSTRACT
Environmental toxicology should only be applied to the study of direct effects of environmental chemicals on human beings, whereas the term ecotoxicology should be used only for the study of the effects of chemicals on ecosystems and their nonhuman components. However, it should pointed out that in many cases this distinction can be artificial. Human beings are not isolated from the natural environment; they are at the top of many food chains and there are now few ecosystems in which the human species is not involved.1
