Health hazards of heavy metal pollution

Abstract

The global population growth, urbanization and the increased energy demand led to serious changes in the environment. Numerous anthropogenic activities release a variety of toxic and potentially toxic pollutants into the environment, some of which are heavy metals. Even though the global concern over their health impacts has been increasing over the last decades and the adverse effects of heavy metals have been thoroughly studied, heavy metal pollution is still one of the key environmental problems worldwide. Many regulations in this field in the past years contributed to the decrease of the emission of heavy metals; however, this kind of pollution still poses a health threat, especially in developing countries. Heavy metals are persistent in the environment and their elevated emission during longer period of time can cause contamination of the environment. They are emitted in all environmental media, but can also be easily transported between them due to the atmospheric deposition, water runoff, etc., and thus accumulate in the environment or penetrate the food chains. The main routes of human exposure to heavy metals are through ingestion, inhalation or via dermal contact. Hence, there is a need for better understanding of absorption, distribution and deposition of heavy metals in the human body. This information is of a crucial importance for the evaluation of heavy metal potential health implications. In this chapter, an overview of the heavy metal health hazards is presented as a consequence of heavy metal pollution, their availability and cycling between different media in the environment.