© 2002 American Thoracic Society
Environmental Oxidant Pollutant Effects on Biologic SystemsA Focus on Micronutrient Antioxidant–Oxidant InteractionsDivision of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Division of Nephrology, and Center for Comparative Lung Biology and Medicine, University of California School of Medicine, Davis, California; Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany; and Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to Carroll E. Cross, M.D., Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, University of California, Davis, 4150 V Street, Suite 3400, Sacramento, CA 95817. E-mail: cecross{at}ucdavis.edu ABSTRACT Oxidative atmospheric pollutants represent a significant source of stress to both terrestrial plants and animals. The biosurfaces of plants and surface-living organisms are directly exposed to these pollutant stresses. These surfaces, including respiratory tract surfaces, contain integrated antioxidant systems that would be expected to provide a primary defense against environmental threats caused by atmospheric reactive oxygen species. When the biosurface antioxidant defenses are overwhelmed, oxidative stress to the cellular components of the exposed biosurfaces can be expected, inducing inflammatory, adaptive, injurious, and reparative processes. Studies of mutants and/or transformed plants and insects, with specific alterations in key components of antioxidant defense systems, offer opportunities to dissect the complex systems that maintain surface defenses against environmental oxidants. In this article, we use a comparative approach to consider interactions of atmospheric oxidant pollutants with selected biosystems, with focus on O3 as the pollutant; plants, flies, skin, and lungs as the exposed biosystems; and nonenzymatic micronutrient antioxidants as significant contributors to overall antioxidant defense strategies of these varied biosystems. Parallelisms among several living organisms, with regard to their protective strategies against environmental atmospheric oxidants, are presented.
Key Words: ascorbic acid • flies • ozone • plants • respiratory tract lining fluids This article has been cited by other articles:
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