Pollutants Induced Cancer in Experimental Animals

Rajesh K. Bhaskar

Abstract: Pollution is the greatest threat posed to humanity and biosphere as a whole. Envionmental factors and genetic suspectibility play impotant role in many human cancers. There is an increasing global concern on the upward trend of cancer attributable to the environmental causes. The role played by liver in the removal of substances from the portal circulation makes it susceptible to first and persistent attack by offending agents like viruses, chemicals, toxins in food, peroxides, drugs, environmental pollutants etc. culminating in liver pathology. On exposure to xenobiotics, the liver of vertebrates manage to eliminate such foreign compounda as early as possible. During xenobiotic metabolism, highly reactive metabolites like peroxides, epoxides and other radicals are formed.

Keywords: Pollution, xenobiotics, biochemical markers, toxic chemicals, carcinogenesis, toxicity