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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Xenobiotic Metabolism

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Publisher Summary This chapter reveals that one's body takes up significant amounts of material that are used neither as energy substrates nor as building blocks for biological matrices. Uptake of such xenobiotica occurs mainly with the food but also by inhalation or transdermally. If these compounds accumulated in the organism, the resulting body burden would have been enormous. Thus, efficient mechanisms for the excretion of such compounds that have their roots very early in the evolution of life have developed. The two major elimination pathways in humans are excretion via bile and excretion via urine. For volatile compounds, exhalation can represent the dominant mechanism of excretion. In some cases, secretion into the mother's milk may be of toxicological significance. Both renal and biliary elimination require water- soluble substrates and become increasingly efficient with rising polarity of the compound to be excreted.