Behavioral toxicology is a young discipline in the United States; so young, in fact, that this is one of its first books. Behavioral questions are bound to play a major role in future scientific work and governmental decisions involving the health effects of environmental contaminants and other chemicals. This role springs from two key problems that face scientists and public agencies required to set acceptable exposure standards or to determine criteria for the toxicity of therapeutic chemicals: How do you evaluate effects that may show up only as subtle functional disturbances? And how do you de tect toxic effects early enough so that they may still be reversible, before they produce major damage? The contributions in this book come from a collection of scientists whose interests span a wide variety of problem areas. The focus is largely on me thodological issues because they represent the most immediate concern of the discipline. We expect that this collection of papers will represent a useful source book for behavioral toxicology for some time. For the past few years, the University of Rochester's Department of Radiation Biology and Biophysics has sponsored a series of international conferences on chemical toxicity, partly as a response to concern over the con sequences to health of the rich chemical soup in which we live. This book is based upon presentations made to the fifth of the series. Held in June, 1972, it was the first formal meeting devoted to behavioral toxicology in this country."

The world's aging populations, with age-related disorders affecting every organ system, are generating medical care costs rising at an unsustainable rate. Although such disorders are expected, we are now beginning to ask whether exposures to toxic environmental chemicals hasten or account for their onset. This book provides a detailed review of current knowledge about the possible associations between a variety of chemical contaminants and adverse effects later in life. It will serve as a guide to policy decisions about protecting us from chemical exposures that distort the aging process. It provides a guide to current understanding of how our contaminated environment may be influencing the aging process and contains examples of approaches that will help us undertake further research on this topic. It will help alert policy makers to the implications of chemical pollution for aging populations and will help formulate initiatives for environmental protection. The book provides a comprehensive view of how environmental exposures may alter the health of our aging population. For readers engaged in environmental research, or aging research, it will highlight a number of questions that need more attention For other readers, they will learn something about the kind of exposures they should avoid or that they should prompt policy makers to reduce or eliminate.

Neurotoxicity and Developmental Disabilities is a comprehensive review of the relationship between neurotoxicity and mental retardation. Though individual chapters each focus on a specific toxin, the chapters jointly emphasize that many variables influence the developmental outcomes following exposure to neurotoxicants, including timing of exposure, pattern of exposure, dose, susceptibility, and environmental conditions.
Coverage includes the developmental consequences of maternal exposure to methyl mercury, and direct exposure to PCBs and Dioxins, lead, methanol, parental smoking, pthalates and pesticides. Additional chapters review research on environmental agents and autism, and assessment studies of exposure.
This thematic volume in the "International Review of Research in Mental Retardation" begins with forewords by Stephen R. Schroeder, and series editor Laraine Glidden.