The concept of critical levels of toxic heavy metals in target tissues

Abstract

The high reactivity of heavy metals with biological systems is well documented, although some disagreement remains on the precise dose-effect relationships involved. This represents a question of considerable importance, especially in attempts to assess the risks of exposure. The implicit assumption is usually made that a threshold concentration of specific metals exists in the most sensitive target organ, so that an increased frequency of functional lesions will be expected if this threshold is exceeded. The threshold for the metal defines its so-called critical level, and this review was written in order to examine the theoretical and practical difficulties in establishing such a level. Among these may be cited, for instance, the dependence of what constitutes the target tissue on the speciation of the metal, the changes in apparent critical level with rate and route of metal administration, the short half-life of some of the metals as well as their compartmentation in the tissues, and the considerable initiation delay frequently preceding the appearance of lesions. For these and other reasons a useful approximate value for a critical concentration has only been proposed so far for the total Cd concentration in the renal cortex of chronically exposed human adults.