Toxins

Healthy is the most important value for all people, which must always be protected. But at this time, many people will make harmful causes for their body, for example, smoking, drinking different alcoholic products and eating which negatively affects their body. Because when using these products, a person always weakens his body and affects his body with various substances. But it is not this person who has always lived and lives surrounded by various of these substances called toxicants or toxins. These substances are not only in products, and they can even exist in other organisms, too, a person was and has always been in contact with these substances and organisms. A wide range of toxins are produced by plants (phytotoxins) and marine invertebrates. Orfila Mathieu Joseph Bonaventure (1814) wrote: “Poison is a substance that, in small quantities, when brought into contact with a living organism, destroys health or destroys life”. Poisons in the industry are called toxicants. That's why poisons and toxins are classified as follows.

• 1 .    By origin : toxicants of natural origin; biological origin; bacterial toxins; vegetable poisons; poisons of animal origin; inorganic compounds; organic compounds of non-biological origin; synthetic toxicants.

• 2.    According to the method of use by humans: pesticides; medicines and cosmetics; nutritional supplements; fuels and oils; solvents, dyes, adhesives; chemical synthesis by-products, impurities and wastes.

• 3.    According to the conditions of exposure: environmental pollutants among (air, water, soil); professional toxicants; bit toxicants; bad habits and addictions (tobacco, alcohol, drugs, medicines; damaging factors in special conditions of exposure; emergency and catastrophic origin; chemical warfare agents.

Toxicity is a basic concept in modern toxicology. In a general form, toxicity can be defined as the property (ability) of chemicals, acting on biological systems in a non-mechanical way, to cause their damage or death, or, in relation to the human body, the ability to cause malfunction, disease or death.

Substances differ significantly in toxicity. The less a substance is capable of causing damage to the body, the more toxic it is ( Table 1 ).

• Table 1. Toxicity and molecular weight of some toxins

  №	toxins	Producer	Mol.m	LD 50 mg/kg ( mol / kg )
  1	Botulinum	Clostridium botulinium bacterium	1,5*10 5	2,6 *10 -8
  2	Tetanus	Clostridium bacteria	1,4*105	2,8 * 10-8 2*10-16
  3	Ricin	Castor oil plant Ricinus communis	6,5* 104	2,8*10-3 4,3*10-11