Summary
‘One
Health’
as a discipline links human and veterinary medicine as co-equal
partners in an increasingly efficient joint venture into health
promotion and prioritised research. ‘One
Toxicology’
is proposed as a way to reunify toxicology as a component of ‘Ecosystem
Health’
and the encompassing ‘One
Health’.
Ecotoxicology, which includes wild animal, plant and microbial communities,
is a critical component of ‘Ecosystem
Health’.
‘One
Toxicology’
is proposed to help hold toxicological sciences together and maintain
intimate connections to medicine in general. ‘One
Toxicology’
is efficient because biochemical systems are highly conserved and,
thus, when one group of species is at risk, other groups of species
are also often at risk. Fortunately, in the case of toxicological
risk, problems can be avoided, because humans can minimise exposures.
Historically, human health has benefited immensely from studies
of the impacts of chemicals on laboratory animals and wildlife.
Similarly, veterinarians and wildlife managers have learned from
careless or accidental poisonings of humans to protect the health
of both domestic and wild animals. Yet, newly discovered emerging
toxicoses abound, and well-known
toxicoses persist -
to the detriment of all life forms, including our own. Thus, in
the ‘One
Toxicology’
of the future, disciplinary boundaries should more rapidly blur.
If this is done well, physicians, various public health specialists,
veterinarians of many disciplines, wildlife health specialists,
ecologists and an array of toxicologists will share and rely upon
disparate sources of information with increasing efficiency to facilitate
diagnosis and management of poisoning; to prevent unwanted, unwise,
and unnecessary toxic injury to human, animal, plant, and microbial
components of biodiversity; to decrease nutrients available that
enable toxigenic species; and to prevent releases of chemical contaminants
that indirectly set the stage for infectious diseases.
Keywords
Ecosystem,
Health, Medicine, One Health, Public health, Toxicology, Veterinary. |