[My experience in mercury toxicology: behavioral teratology study of the effects of prenatal exposure to environmental pollutants].

I would like to express sincere thanks to all the people involved in awarding the 2005 Congress Award. It is a great honor to be given the prize. I have been interested in mercury toxicology since I was a graduate student and mercury toxicology has been my main subject of focus for 30 years. I am proud to continue the research in this field. In this presentation I would like to summarize some of my research works and to talk anecdotes related to the research works. Soon after I became involved in this research field, I came across "behavioral teratology", which is a novel field of study whose focus is understanding the postnatal consequences of exposure to harmful agents in utero. Spyker and her colleagues clearly showed postnatal behavioral deviations in mouse offspring exposed to a low dose of methylmercury prenatally. In various animal experiments, I elucidated the subtle consequences that appear postnatally. I found that these consequences are modified by many factors such as selenium status, PCBs, and heat, because the degree of exposure to produce these consequences can be extremely small. These experiments simulate actual human life and the results will be useful to assess the risk of methylmercury exposure through fish consumption in the human population, since fish eating populations are exposed to these factors at a low dose. Recently, cohort studies elucidating the possible effects of prenatal exposure to environmental pollutants in the postnatal period have been established and ongoing. When a conclusion is drawn, it is expected to serve as basic information that is useful for the risk assessment of methylmercury and other environmental pollutants. This will give great gratification to scientists in environmental health and preventive medicine.