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| Diatoms (Seymour Center) |
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Environmental Toxicology
Cluster Members The environmental toxicology department brings together scientists who use a multitude of approaches to understand diverse toxic substances. The program at UC Santa Cruz is unique in that scientists study living harmful agents, as well as chemical agents. Research combines environmental chemistry and exposure routes of toxins with the organismal, cellular, and molecular mechanisms of intoxication.
For much of the world's population, public health and aquatic resources are often jeopardized by water pollution. Insufficient attention has been paid to research in aquatic toxicology. The environmental toxicology program attempts to train people in the broad perspectives and modern analytical skills required for solving the problems facing society.
Research emphasis include how organisms are exposed to metals, how these metals cause toxicity, and investigating concentration, speciation, and isotopic compositioni of contaminant metals, study of host-pathogen interactions, ecology & evolution of pathogenic microorganisms, adaptation of pathogenic and non-pathogenic microorganisms to environmental stresses, and mechanisms of microbial biotransformation of pollutants and toxic metals, and exposure pathways and toxicity of contaminants and pathogens within humans. |
