Toxicity and Safety Assessment of Exposure to Heavy Metals
A special issue of Toxics (ISSN 2305-6304). This special issue belongs to the section "Metals and Radioactive Substances".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 14 November 2025 | Viewed by 75
Special Issue Editors
Interests: risk assessment and exposure assessment of risky populations; molecular mechanisms of toxicity; thioredoxin and glutaredoxin systems; mercury, methylmercury and thimerosal; drug repurposing; cancer
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: neurotoxicology; metals; neurodegeneration
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
As organizers of this Special Issue, we intend to provide insight into the sources of heavy metals and metalloids and their effects on the environment and living organisms, covering traditional and modern faces of exposure as described below.
Heavy metals and metalloids toxicity has proven to be a major threat, and there are several health risks associated with it. Heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury, aluminum, iron, arsenic, lead, and chromium imbalance ROS production and the defense redox systems, leading to toxicity in target organs that depend upon the absorbed dose, the route of exposure, and the duration of exposure, i.e., acute or chronic.
We look with particular interest to recently identified forms of exposure to metals, such as the metals associated with micro- and nanoplastics. Metal-based imaging agents containing gallium and gadolinium are also important for this topic.
Supplementation of iron, zinc, copper, and selenium, among others, prevents diseases, but the excess of these elements is also deleterious to the organisms and is also linked to health problems, and this constitutes another facet of this Special Issue.
The use of metals for health and healing, such as platinum compounds, gold, ruthenium, osmium, iridium, rhodium, silver, and rhenium complexes, has been the subject of intensive investigation and they are drug candidates for cancer and infectious diseases as well as antirheumatic, antimalarial, and antimicrobial drugs. Nevertheless, the use of these metallodrugs is not exempt from risk, and papers reporting either their toxicity or safety assessment are very welcome.
Finally, ways to counterbalance the toxicity of metals and metalloids are considered contributions of great interest.
Dr. Cristina Carvalho
Prof. Dr. Michael Aschner
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Toxics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- human exposure to metals
- environmental contamination
- metals’ biogeochemistry
- food metal contaminants
- toxic effects of metals
- metals’ mechanisms of toxicity
- risk assessment
- biomarkers
- metallodrugs
- metal ion chelators
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