Application of Sentinel Animals to Human Health Risk Assessment of Environmental Contaminants
前哨动物在环境污染物人体健康风险评价中的应用

Sentinel animals can quickly react to environmental contaminants before the ecosystem or human health is obviously affected. Therefore, potential health risks of environmental contaminants can be early warned using sentinel animals. Furthermore, sentinel animals can provide much information on the kinds of contaminants, pollution level, bioavailability, bioaccumulation, and metabolism. The information from sentinel animals may be considered as early warning for effects of contaminants on human health due to structural and functional similarities between animals and humans, although the information cannot be directly extrapolated to human. The application of fish, frogs, and minks as sentinel animals for human health risk evaluation of environmental contaminants was reviewed in this paper, and their merits and disadvantages and applicable ranges were discussed, respectively. Finally, we suggested that ecotoxicological survey on sentinel animals in China should be developed to promote human health risk evaluation of environmental contaminants.