Bernardino Ramazzini’s &lt;i&gt;De Morbis Artificum Diatriba&lt;/i&gt; on Workers’ Health—the Birth of a New Discipline

Franco, Giuliano

doi:10.7888/juoeh.43.341

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…It can very well be the first occurrence of what we would nowadays call an association between occupational exposure and cancer-in a time were diseases were mostly attributed to mystical causes (the reader is diverted to the review by Hayes and Gilbert [21] on the hallmarks of toxicology). Additionally, the Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini (1633-1714), often regarded to be the founder of occupational medicine, in his most famous book, De Morbis Artificum Diatriba ('On the Diseases of Workers'), already discussed the environment-related aetiology of various diseases, from pneumoconiosis to breast cancer (see Franco [22]). It needs to be noted, though, that if Theophrast established a link between toxicology and disease and Ramazzini associated occupational exposure to disease, including cancer, the study of chemical toxicology at this stage was still struggling with establishing causation due to the lack of identification of carcinogens per se.…”

Section: A Brief Historical Overview Of Cancer and Pollutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

After a Century of Research into Environmental Mutagens and Carcinogens, Where Do We Stand?

Vitorino

Costa

2023

IJERPH

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Cancer is one of the longest-known human diseases, yet only in recent times have we begun to perceive that the percentage of neoplasms caused by environmental factors, lifestyle and chemicals, is likely underestimated. The first medical reports associating cancer with pollutants like tars appeared by the early 20th century, but despite initial evidence relating oncogenesis and chromosomal alterations, only after the structure of DNA had been elucidated in the 1950s have genetic disorders been fully perceived as cause. This led to a growing interest in genotoxic and mutagenic pollutants. Even though we are now familiar with a range of environmental carcinogens spanning between aromatic hydrocarbons and asbestos to radionuclides and forms of carbon nanomaterials, establishing causal networks between pollutants and cancer remains cumbersome. In most part, this is due to the complexity of toxicant matrices, unknown modes-of-action of chemicals or their mixtures, the widening array of novel pollutants plus difficulties in subtracting background effects from true aetiology of disease. Recent advances in analytical chemistry, high-throughput toxicology, next-generation sequencing, computational biology and databases that allocate whole normal and cancer genomes, all indicate that we are on the verge of a new age of research into mechanistic ‘oncotoxicology’, but how can it impact risk assessment and prevention?

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Section: A Brief Historical Overview Of Cancer and Pollutionmentioning

confidence: 99%