前哨动物在环境污染物人体健康风险评价中的应用

前哨动物能够在污染物对生态系统或人体健康产生明显影响之前做出反应,所以利用前哨动物能够对环境污染的健康风险做早期预报,同时可提供环境中污染物种类、污染水平、生物可利用性、富集代谢等多方面的信息.虽然来自前哨动物的信息不能直接外推于人,但由于动物和人体结构和功能的相似性,这些信息可作为污染物对人体作用的早期警报.论文对作为前哨动物的某些鱼类、两栖动物和哺乳动物在环境污染物人体健康风险评价中的应用进行了简要概述,讨论了它们作为前哨动物各自的优缺点和适用范围,最后建议在国内大力开展前哨动物生态毒理学调查,以促进人体健康风险评价工作.

Application of Sentinel Animals to Human Health Risk Assessment of Environmental Contaminants

Sentinel animals can quickly react to environmental contaminants before the ecosystem or human health is obviously affected. Therefore, potential health risks of environmental contaminants can be early warned using sentinel animals. Furthermore, sentinel animals can provide much information on the kinds of contaminants, pollution level, bioavailability, bioaccumulation, and metabolism. The information from sentinel animals may be considered as early warning for effects of contaminants on human health due to structural and functional similarities between animals and humans, although the information cannot be directly extrapolated to human. The application of fish, frogs, and minks as sentinel animals for human health risk evaluation of environmental contaminants was reviewed in this paper, and their merits and disadvantages and applicable ranges were discussed, respectively. Finally, we suggested that ecotoxicological survey on sentinel animals in China should be developed to promote human health risk evaluation of environmental contaminants.