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The new-born baby generally starts life as a sort of biological
adventure which is increasingly a gamble against the risks of
environmental pollution – a situation brought about by the parents
and grandparents in their quest for so-called progress.
From the cradle, to his first steps, then on to school to learn
and finally he starts to work and toil to earn his daily bread, or
also to buy those much desired but non-essential consumer goods,
which are a status symbol of modern and globalised societies. But
along the way he can come across environmental poisons.
In all these everyday circumstances the individual is exposed to
harmful environmental agents which can enter the organism through
the respiratory system, or which are taken in with food and drink.
There is a compulsory transit route into which the pathogen enters
at varying speed, according to the physiological conditions of the
mucous membranes of the receiving organs, and generally in
concentrations proportional to exposure. This is a sort of waiting
room. The poison can be localised in one or more tissues which are
also called target organs. This characteristic, which in technical
terms is known as organotrophism, is not an exclusive trend, but
a preferential one, based especially on statistics. Actually heavy
metals go everywhere, for example mercury can be found in the
hair, in nails and in the brain, but it only causes damage to the
nervous system. Another example can be found in lead: it goes to
the kidneys, the brain, the blood-forming bone marrow, the
reproductive organs, as well as the liver, and damages all the
organs except the liver. At a early stage the presence of poisons
can be documented by the positivity of biological indicators.
Then the poisons can remain for a relatively long period in the
tissues of primary localisation, and hence be removed and moved to
another location, such as the emunctories, the sweat glands and
the kidneys as preferential sites. Both in the primary location
and on exiting the harmful agent can perform its toxic function,
at a molecular, cellular, tissue or system level. Nature has
provided these targets with defence mechanisms: their success
depends on the concentration of poison, the defence capacities, as
well as the duration of the harmful pathogen. When the defences
are defeated, after a period of latency, at the appearance of the
first symptoms, with the positivity of the biological indicators,
the clinical horizon has been passed. From now on it is only
possible to make early diagnosis, but no longer real prevention.
Through the case history, together with a series of diagnostic,
analytical and/or instrumental tests, the physician can make an
etiological diagnosis, which is very useful in environmental
medicine, because it allows the patient to be removed from further
exposure to the pathogen, and at the same time to receive suitable
and effective treatment. In the absence of such action, the
disease may become worse until it exceeds the irreversibility
level. At this point the physician will have to consider replacing
the tissue or the organ which does not function, or, in the case
of cancer, that sad sequence of surgical mutilation, accompanied
by chemiotherapic poisoning or radiotherapic burns. From this
point on, the patient has no other prospects except the
possibility of a fall in his quality of life which may become so
unsustainable that death may appear as a release. |
