Abstract
There is a widespread repeated exposure of the population to the pesticides and heavy metals of occupational and environmental origin. Such population is forced to undergo continuous stress imposed by combined exposure of the heavy metals and different classes of the pesticides used in agricultural as well as health practices. The existing reports from several workers have indicated that heavy metals and pesticides in combination may lead more severe impact on the human health when compared to their individual effects. Such a combination of pesticides and heavy metals may also change or influence the detection of exposure. Several studies in past have shown the synergistic toxic effects of heavy metals and pesticides. Such evaluations have revealed the synergistic interactions of various heavy metals and pesticides in animals as well as humans. The aim of the present article is to provide a synthesis of existing knowledge on the synergistic effects of heavy metal and pesticides in living systems. The information included in this article may be useful for different environment protection agencies and policy makers to consider the combined effects of heavy metals and pesticides on humans while designing strategies toward environmental protection and safety regulations about human health.
Highlights
Heavy metals are those inorganic elements which have five times the specific gravity of water (Fergusson, 1990)
Though the exact mechanism of their pathogenicity is not known but there are reports from various laboratories indicating that the exposure of these heavy metals or their excess accumulation in the body tissues may induce production of free radicals [reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS)] which lead to the production of oxidative stress (OS) (Figure 1; Flora et al, 2008; Sharma et al, 2014; Gupta et al, 2015a; Asmat et al, 2016)
The dimethoatelead (DM-Pb) combination affected the relative thymus weight and the mean corpuscular volume (MCV) value. These findings showed that the immunotoxic effects of the investigated materials, including their detectability and health consequences can be modified in case of combined exposure (Institóris et al, 1999)
Summary
Heavy metals are those inorganic elements which have five times the specific gravity of water (Fergusson, 1990). Heavy metals produce toxicity by forming complexes with cellular compounds containing sulfur, oxygen, or nitrogen (Aguilera et al, 2017; Kumar et al, 2017; Trost and Tracy, 2017) on entering into our body through food, drinking water, and air These complexes inactivate or modulate the critical enzyme systems or/protein structures leading to cellular dysfunction and necrosis (Sharma et al, 2014). It has been reported that heavy metals and pesticides mainly enter into the human/animal body through ingestion, such as food materials (Satarug et al, 2003), inhalation and dermal contact, such as emissions of waste material in the form of smoke, dust particle, fume of chemicals from several industrial activities, such as mining, and manufacturing of batteries (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, 2007). The main issue raised by these studies is whether the Lowest Observed Effect
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