Toxicology is the science of the effects of toxic substances on the body. Toxic substances are medicines, chemicals from everyday life or industry, and food additives. Toxicology is also a branch of pharmacology that is scientifically researching the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of poisoning. Toxin is a poisonous substance that forms in living cells of organisms and acts in very low concentrations. Toxins can be small molecules, peptides, proteins that cause disease by absorption or contact with tissues. Toxins react with biological macromolecules, such as enzymes and cellular receptors. The effects of toxins vary from minimal to lethal. Toxicity is the degree to which a substance can cause damage to the body, caused by a toxin. Toxicity can refer to the whole organism, such as a human, animal, plant or bacterium, and also to substructures, eg cells, organs, etc. By extension, the word toxicity can also be described as a toxic effect on larger and more complex groups, such as family and social groups. The central concept of toxicology is dose-dependent toxicity; even harmless substances such as water can lead to water poisoning if consumed in high enough doses, while taking a sufficiently small amount of highly toxic substances such as snake venom can occur without any consequences or effects of toxicity.

Keywords:Substance; Poison; Poisoning; Testing

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Citation

Citation: Siniša Franjić. “A Few Words about Toxicology”. Acta Scientific Pharmacology 1.1 (2020): 25-29.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Siniša Franjić. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.