Elsevier

NeuroToxicology

Volume 76, January 2020, Pages 111-113
NeuroToxicology

Review
Putting findings from the Seychelles Child Development Study into perspective: The importance of a historical special issue of the Seychelles Medical and Dental Journal

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuro.2019.10.010Get rights and content

Abstract

We are pleased to introduce this special issue of Neurotoxicology. It reproduces Volume 7, Number 1 of the Seychelles Medical and Dental Journal (SMDJ), initially published in November 2004. Publication of the SMDJ was discontinued in 2005 and the manuscripts it published are no longer accessible to the scientific community. The papers in this special issue lay the background for the Seychelles Child Development Study (SCDS) and provide valuable data on the MeHg exposures that occurred at Niigata, Japan. They are relevant to the ongoing debate over whether the consumption of fish and consequently low-level exposure to methylmercury (MeHg) is a risk to human health.

Section snippets

Background

Human toxicity of organic mercury (Hg) was described in the 1800s and more widely recognized in the 1940s when Hunter and Russell described 4 cases with industrial MeHg exposure (Hunter et al., 1940). Subsequently MeHg poisoning was reported from Minamata Japan where industrial contamination of local seafood led to a widespread poisoning. Contaminated fish at Minamata had concentrations of MeHg exceeding 10 ppm and some exceeded 100 ppm. During the Minamata outbreak it was recognized that fetal

The 2003 conference

We believed at this time that our research had reached a crossroads. It was no longer only a study of the neurotoxicology of MeHg but rather had become a study of potentially complex associations between MeHg, nutrients, fish consumption and diet, moving toward specifying mechanisms of interaction between and among nutritional components of a diet high in fish. We felt that it was the right time to hold a scientific meeting to discuss in detail where we (and our field) had been and where the

The papers

There were two introductory talks (summarized in Shamlaye (2004)), by the Seychelles Minister of Health, Patrick Pillay, and the Director of the Special Environmental Diseases Office in the Japanese Ministry of the Environment, Dr. Kazuko Kamiya. A third keynote talk was given by the then-director of the National Institute of Environmental Sciences and National Toxicology Program in the US, Dr. Kenneth Olden. Dr. Olden encouraged more investigation into genetics and to biochemical processes

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grant R01-ES010219 from the United States National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (National Institutes of Health).

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