How Do Harmful Elements Affect the Human Body?

Exposure to harmful elements and toxic substances can affect human health.

Some substances can damage your skin and internal organs (such as your heart, liver, kidneys and brain), cause asthma or other diseases, including cancer.

Exposure to harmful substances can affect human health.

How Do Harmful Elements and Chemicals Affect the Human Body?

Harmful Elements and Hazardous Substances

On a daily basis, a person is exposed to harmful substances that are dangerous to his body, either in his workplace, in his home, or on the street.

Hazardous substances can be any substance, whether solid, liquid, or gas, that may cause harm to human health.

It is important in the field of research on how these substances and the harmful elements affect the body that distinguishes between the terms of toxicity and hazard exposure.

Toxicity is the degree to which a chemical substance can harm an organism. It is the ability of a substance to produce undesirable effects in the body.

Hazard exposure is a condition in which an individual or a group of people remain at imminent risk of danger.

Consequently, the substance can be toxic, but it is not dangerous if it is handled properly, it can be low toxic, but its degree of severity is high.

How can Hazardous Substances Enter the 'Body?

There are three main ways for substances to enter the body. These are:

Ingestion: means eating something through the mouth, where a person can eat food or drink contaminated with the toxic substance.

Absorption: As if the material comes into contact with the skin or eyes, and this may cause a local effect, or it may be absorbed into the body.

Inhalation: where these substances enter the body through breathing and this method is considered one of the most important ways of entering substances, and toxic elements, into the body.

How Do Chemicals Affect the Human Body?

The body's level of exposure to harmful substances and chemicals can be classified as: acute (immediate) or chronic (long-term).

The chronic effect appears after exposure to harmful substances for a long time.

The acute effect appears immediately after exposure to the substance.

In a chronic effect, the body has been exposed to a dose of the substance at specified stages during a specified period of time. 

In an acute effect, the body has been exposed to a dose of the substance in one batch so that the body has absorbed it quickly.

Harmful elements and toxic substances can damage your skin and internal organs (such as your heart, liver, kidneys, and brain), cause asthma or other diseases, including cancer. 

What are the Effects of Harmful Substances on the Body?

The way harmful substances affect the body can be classified according to how they work:

Irritants: The substance to which the tissues were exposed caused a state of instability in it, resulting in the emergence of a group of symptoms on these tissues. Irritant substances may cause reversible inflammation or irritation to a body surface, the eyes or airways after a single exposure. Examples include paraben preservatives, ascorbic acid, and alpha-hydroxy acids such as malic acid, glycolic acid, and lactic acid.

Asphyxiants: Asphyxiants displace oxygen in the ambient atmosphere and thus cause a decrease in the amount of oxygen that reaches the tissues in those who are exposed, leading to unconsciousness and death. Examples include carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and others.

Narcotics or Anesthetics: These substances affect the functions of the central nervous system and cause this system to be inhibited. A well-known example of these substances is chloroform.

Systemic Poisons: These poisons mainly destroy the body from the inside, and affect its internal organs, such as those that affect the liver and kidneys including inorganic lead and organophosphate insecticides.

Carcinogens: Exposure to these substances can increase the risk of cancer. Examples include cadmium, radon, asbestos, nickel, benzene, benzidine, and vinyl chloride.

Mutagens: These substances affect cells so that they mutate in them. These may lead to cancer, or future changes to the cells of the body, including radioactive materials.

Teratogens: If a pregnant woman is exposed to these substances, she may give birth to a child with congenital anomalies such as thalidomide.

Sensitizers: These substances cause allergic symptoms in normal tissue after repeated exposure to the chemical such as itching, shortness of breath, and others, for example, dyes.