Ecotoxicology, revisiting its pioneers
- PDF / 442,032 Bytes
- 6 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 61 Downloads / 241 Views
ENVIRONMENTAL TOXICITY ASSESSMENT: STATE OF THE ART AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN A WORLD OF ARISING THREATS
Ecotoxicology, revisiting its pioneers Paule Vasseur 1
&
Jean-François Masfaraud 1 & Christian Blaise 2
Received: 28 December 2019 / Accepted: 23 January 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Ecotoxicology is a discipline resulting from pollution events that harmed human and environmental health by the mid-twentieth century. Environmental considerations were simply inexistent at this time, and inevitably deleterious effects and environmental disasters followed. These historical events, like Clear Lake disaster in California, will be recalled, as well as new concepts developed, and scientists involved in these findings. A special tribute is given to Professor Jean-Michel Jouany who conceptualized newly acquired knowledge into an emerging discipline, which he named “ecotoxicology” in the 1960s, and understood to be “toxicology in an ecological perspective.” However, René Truhaut is considered as the “father of ecotoxicology” by posterity, while his young mentor Jouany was shadowed by the latter. It is timely to “open the book” as concerns these two exceptional personalities and their working relationships, first to set the record straight and second to give credit where credit is due. Keywords Ecosystem . Chronic toxicity . Jean-Michel Jouany . René Truhaut . Minamata . Clear Lake
Introduction Ecotoxicology emerged by the mid-twentieth century. In the 1950s, all developing countries were recovering from the Second World War. “Chemistry, a key to better living” was the popular slogan in that time of technical and economic development. As environmental considerations were then totally inexistent, setbacks appeared quickly with air and water pollution events! Two major episodes of acid smog in London in 1950 and 1952 killed several thousands of Londoners from respiratory symptoms. The first oxidizing smogs were also observed in California, as a result of intensive car traffic producing nitrogen oxides in exhaust emissions, associated with sunny weather and no wind conditions. Yet, on top of atmospheric events, chronic and insidious pollution of water actually triggered the discipline, after environmental disasters, and unexpected health problems had Responsible Editor: Philippe Garrigues * Paule Vasseur [email protected] 1
Université de Lorraine, CNRS, LIEC, 57070 Metz, France
2
Aquatic Toxicology, Environment Canada, Centre Saint-Laurent, Montréal, Canada
occurred worldwide. The ecosystem-wide contamination of Clear Lake in California and Minamata disease in Japan sounded the alarm on unequivocal insults to humans and biota caused by persistent pollutants.
Historical pollution events The Clear lake event had a worldwide impact due to dramatic ecosystem damages produced in spite of a regulatory use of insecticides. Clear Lake is a touristic site in California and an aquatic area that was populated with thousands of magnificent fish-eating birds, the grebes (
Data Loading...
