Toxicology

Running Head: Toxicology 1
Toxicology
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Institutional affiliation

Toxicology 2
QUESTION 1
Explain the difference between pollution and contamination. Discuss a specific
environmental pollutant that has had a negative effect on the environment. How did the
pollutant affect the environment? How was the pollutant introduced and transferred
throughout the environment? Your response should be at least 300 words in length.
The environment may be altered by a diverse range of stressors that are not necessarily of
chemical origin. For example, pollution may be a result of the introduction of new species.
Pollution is brought about by the presence of toxicants or toxins that result in considerable
biological effects on the habitat. All pollutants can be classified as contaminants. This is because
pollutants are unwanted substances in a system that causes adverse biological or environmental
impact. Contaminants are unwanted substances found in a biological or system that don't
necessarily lead to harmful effects. (Chapman, 2007). Therefore, all contaminants cannot be
classified as pollutants. Hence, contamination is the presence of substances where they are not
required or the presence of these substances in relatively unacceptable concentrations. Pollution
is, therefore, the presence of contaminants the lead to adverse health or environmental effects.
Environmental pollutants include those substances that have extreme effects on the
habitat. The habitat consists of air, soil, plants, water, and human beings or animals. It also
encompasses the pollution that alters the interrelationships that exist between the habitats.
Industrialization and the tremendous increase in the population of human beings have led to a
significant increase in the amounts of waste by-products. The discharge of chemical effluents
into water bodies, disposal of solid wastes, such as plastics, and the release of harmful gases are
examples of environmental pollutants. An example of an environmental pollutant is Methyl-
Mercury pollution in Minamata, Japan.
Methyl mercury is produced in the process of manufacturing acetaldehyde. In Japan, the
factories that were using Mercury as a catalyst dumped the waste products in rivers. Methyl

Toxicology 3
mercury, which has the capabilities of bio-accumulation and bio-concentration, found its way
into marine life. Fishes and shellfishes concentrated the compound. Fish served as the staple food
for most of the fishing families in Japan. People who consumed the fish from contaminated
methyl-mercury contracted a disease that came to be known as the Minamata disease (Harada,
2003). The pollutant was introduced into water bodies through chemical by-products, it
accumulated in fish and later transferred to humans.
QUESTION 2
A population of individuals was exposed to lead contamination in drinking water at the
concentration of 27 parts per billion (ppb). The following represents a small sample set
from the population indicating the level of response to the contaminant rated on a scale
from 1–20. Within your response, please explain how you calculated your answer (1
indicating minimal effects and 20 indicating maximum effects to the lead exposure). Given
the data set 9, 12, 7, 15, 8, 9, 10, calculate the following results: a. mean, b. mode, c. median,
and d. standard deviation. Your response should be at least 300 words in length.
a) Mean
The mean of the response level is ten. The value is calculated by adding up the numerals
that indicate the level of the responses to get the total value. The total value is the divide by the
number of respondents that was given towards the level of contamination to get the mean level.
The calculation is as shown below:
9+12+7+15+ 8+9+10
7 =10
b) Mode
The mode will be indicated by the value that is given by the largest number of
respondents. In this case of lead poisoning, the numeral that attracted the greatest number of
respondents as the level of contamination is nine.
The responses that were given in no particular order are; 9, 12, 7, 15, 8, 9, 10. First, I
arranged the numeric responses in ascending order: 7, 8, 9, 9,10, 12, 15. From the arranged