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Place makes the poison: Wesolowski Award Lecture — 1999

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology volume 12, pages 167–171 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

Paracelsus, the Renaissance figure often called the father of toxicology, is given that credit partly for being the first to note that “the dose makes the poison.” Modern understanding of the importance of personal exposure in determining dose, however, indicates that to a large extent as well, “place makes the poison.” The relative proximity of a pollution source to people has just as big an impact on its importance as a hazard as does the relative toxicity (including chemical nature and size distribution) of its emissions. The exposure effectiveness (or intake fraction) of common air pollution sources, for example, varies over nearly four orders of magnitude. A place-makes-the-poison perspective not only identifies new relationships and priorities among known sources, but also reveals an entirely new landscape of sources and potential control measures. It, thus, has profound economic and policy implications, which will be examined in the context of particle air pollution in different parts of the world.

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Notes

  1. Stricly, exposure has been defined to refer to the contact of the contaminant at the interface of the appropriatepart of the body and the environment. See the excellent reviews of the exposure assessmentfield and associated terminology done in previous Wesolowski Lectures (e.g., Ott, 1995; Lioy, 1999).

  2. Strictly, this is nominal or potential dose effectiveness, since it does not refer to the amount of material actually staying in the body (Lioy, 1990).

  3. It has only been applied in other realms, fr example, in the relationship of greenhouse gas emissions to global warming (Smith and Ahuja, 1990).

  4. Efforts are now being undertaken to standardize the terminology as “intake fraction” (Bennett et al., forthcoming).

  5. As Lai et al. (2000) have shown, EE/DE is dependent on size of the particle. Thus, some of the apparent differences in toxicity of small particles from outside may be due to differences in EE/DE as well as the differences in respiratory system penetration/retention.

  6. Of course, time, too, is a factor as the ED/DE of a class of sources will depend on the time of day they emit, as well as their location, because of the spatial distribution of person–hours over the day, week, and year.

  7. This assumes that the equivalent EE/De of the monitoring station does not change with regard to the sources for which the EE/DE of the population changes. Since indoor sources hardly affect ambient monitoring stations, however, any shift of EE/DE for the population in regard to an indoor source is unlikely to be matched by a change in the EE/DE of the monitoring station in relation to that source.

  8. A more technically precise term, which also has the advantage of including a temporal interpretation, would be “proximity” (Marshall et al., 2001). Given that the Paracelsus dictum is so widely known, however, there isan alliterative advantage to simply substitute “dose” with “place”.

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    KIRK R SMITH

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SMITH, K. Place makes the poison: Wesolowski Award Lecture — 1999. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 12, 167–171 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.jea.7500219

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