Mutagenic, carcinogenic, and teratogenic effects of pollutants in respect to man
Although a number of chemicals that occur, or have occurred, in industry have been demonstrated to have carcinogenic activity in man, demonstrations of teratogenic, and especially of mutagenic, activities on man within industrial compounds are rarer or non-existent. Demonstrations in the laboratory of teratogenic and mutagenic activities by industrial chemicals do raise properly the question whether such effects would appear in human populations exposed to these chemicals. The widely variable responses of various species, and even of strains within a given species, to carcinogenic, teratogenic, and mutagenic activities renders extrapolation of the results of tests with experimental animals to man uncertain. The facts that all three types of activity considered here involve probably effects on nucleic acids and that repair of defects in nucleic acids can occur, quite possibly to different extents and at different rates in various species, add to the uncertainty of extrapolations to man for these three sorts of actions by environmental chemicals.