Environmental Heavy Metals with Their Benefits and Risks for Human Health

Dear Colleagues,

All heavy metals principally have been generated in the universe before they arrived at the earth where they are found ubiquitous as polluants of air, water, and food and are unintentionally taken up by humans. With respect to human health, part of the heavy metals like iron or copper are beneficial as essential elements to ensure well-being of humans, provided they have genes allowing for heavy metal homeostastasis in the organism and are geneticaklly not determined for Wilson disease (copper) or hemochromatosis (iron). As opposed, other heavy metals such as cadmium and arsenic are not elements essential but rather risk foactors for to human life and health because they are taken up by healthy individuals who cannot provide their adequate removal.

For the current special issue, we would like to include papers on heavy metals with focus on experimental and clinical studies that preferentially consider molecular aspects in close relation to clinical and health considerations that may help provide experimentally tested hypotheses. Consquently, potential authors at best may be toxicologist, biochemists, epidemiologists, environmental regulators, and clinicians, covering the large group of environmental heavy metals and including their interactions with specific metabolic pathways.

Prof. Dr. Rolf Teschke
Guest Editor

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• heavy metals
• metal compound
• iron
• copper
• cadmium
• arsenic
• oxidative stress
• cell death
• toxicology
• Wilson disease
• hemochromatosis