Abstract

Dr. Krishna Singh*

ABSTRACT

Environmental Toxicology is a burning issue of the century. Rachel Carson is the mother of environmental toxicology, as she made it a distinct field in 1962. In the 1970s scientists concerned with this field focused their research on the impacts of agents of biological warfare, industrial pollution, and on discharge from mines. In the next decade; the focus shifted to chemical and radiations associated with radioactive material with the occurrence of Bhopal disaster, in which 45 tons of poisonous methyl isocyanate gas escaped from an insecticide plant, and the Chernobyl accident, in which massive amounts of radioactive material were released into the atmosphere following the explosion of a nuclear reactor. Later in 20th and 21st centuries, the expansion happened with its major concerns as oil spills, the dumping of medical and nuclear waste, air and water pollution, and the impact of substances such as synthetic hormones.