Dear Colleagues,

Definitive evidence of cause and effect in human environmental neurotoxic disease is rare, in part because chemical exposures are diverse, focus is usually placed on a narrow subset, disease incubation may be prolonged, and experimental studies for assessing individual substances are time-consuming and expensive. Furthermore, the results obtained from laboratory models may be challenging to extrapolate to humans. These limitations notwithstanding, this research provides the opportunity to discover which and how natural and synthetic chemical substances cause neurological illness, both in individuals and in populations. The discovery of causation can lead to primary disease prevention. When this logic is applied to human sporadic neurodegenerative disorders, where the current research focus is placed on treatments for delaying clinical expression and advance, the human health and financial impacts of primary disease prevention become apparent. While this is an important component of environmental neurotoxicology, researchers are more often more focused on assessing the health risks from exposure to agents that are known or perceived to have neurotoxic potential, with uncertain extrapolations made from laboratory animal and human health. Finally, as much as neurotoxicology is concerned with the adverse affects of chemical agents on the nervous system, once the chemical culprits are convincingly identified and the mechanisms of attack understood, the same chemicals become valuable tools for the basic neuroscientist to probe nervous system function and dysfunction.

The present collection of invited papers reflects the above biases, approaches, and contributions. Importantly, the net is spread widely, in that the term “environment” is interpreted to include the totality of exogenous chemicals to which humans are exposed, whether in the air, food or water. Substances used in medicine are omitted, even though many have the potential to cause nervous system damage or dysfunction. These include drugs that are used in treating cancer and epilepsy, in anesthesia and psychiatry, and in the treatment of infections and parasites. Other deliberate omissions from this volume are chemicals used to induce euphoria, including alcohol and certain drugs, which also have significant neurotoxic potential. The public health impact from the neurotoxic effects of medicines and drugs is substantial, but beyond the focus of this volume.

Prof. Peter S. Spencer 
Guest Editor

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• Neurotoxins
• Neurotoxicants
• Neurologic disease
• Neurodegenerative disorders