The ideas underpinning this article are mysterious to me, although I am sure it is well-intentioned.
Like Smokefoot, I'm a chemist, and I, too, find the concept of toxic metal nearly useless. My thinking goes along the line of: 1) most elements are metals; 2) most elements are toxic (in one form or another, especially if one includes all oxidation states!); 3) most metals are toxic; 4) whether an element is toxic or not bears no simple relation with whether it is a metal or not. Would we have an article on toxic elements? And importantly, there is no "official" or even an unambiguous definition of what metals count as toxic.
However, I try to step back an think from a different perspective. Maybe not all articles that have metal in the title are "our territory" as chemists. Perhaps others, say toxicologists, find such a concept useful, even if we don't. To try to decide such things, I often resort to the Google Books test. If there are books with toxic metal or a similar phrase in the title, I take it as a sign that someone finds the concept useful enough to write a book about it. And indeed there are a few books, such as Toxic Metal Chemistry in Marine Environments, Environmental Geochemistry of Potentially Toxic Metals, Molecular biology and toxicology of metals, and Concepts on Metal Ion Toxicity. The fact that Darmouth University has a Toxic metals research program also has to mean something. I have to emphasize that these books and this research program don't even use the same definition of metal chemists use (they include arsenic), but there's nothing we can do about that. If they find that these elements that they call toxic metals have some common features that make it convenient to group them from the point of view of toxicology, that's their business.
To conclude, I agree that renaming this article to metal toxicity would be a good move. That way the scope of the article would seem less arbitrary-- "toxic metal" suggests that a metal is either toxic or not, while "metal toxicity" suggests the study of the toxicity of metals, which puts them more along a continuum and makes it easier to think about the nuances. --Itub (talk) 09:21, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
PMID 16841251 is a recent review of toxic metals in common use, and I have access to it. ImpIn | (t - c) 02:02, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't lithium be mentioned? It is used to treat bi-polar disease. Kidney function is strictly monitored because of known "side-affects" which include renal failure. See http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/242772-overview and http://jasn.asnjournals.org/content/11/8/1439.full. Student7 (talk) 12:36, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
I was confused about the best title for this article. I think that the title can remain "Metal toxicity", and that this should be the lead article in the category "Category:Toxic effects of metals". This title comes from ICD-10 Chapter XIX: Injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes code T56, "Toxic effect of metals".
I merged and redirected Metal poisoning to here, "Metal toxicity". Furthermore I redirected the categories Category:Toxic metal poisoning, Category:Metal poisoning, and Category:Dietary mineral toxicity to Category:Toxic effects of metals. See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_June_11#Category:Toxic_metal_poisoning and Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_July_3#Category:Dietary_mineral_toxicity for related discussions.
I know that there is a difference between toxicity and poisoning, but for now, one article is best because there is not much content for the concepts. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:48, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
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The article as written claims "Most often the definition of toxic metals includes at least cadmium, manganese, lead, mercury and the radioactive metals". While manganese is certainly somewhat toxic, (a) it is an essential trace mineral required in doses of ~2 mg/day; (b) it is less toxic than other metals such as copper and nickel that did not make it on the "Most often the definition of toxic metals includes..." list. Furthermore, I am fairly certain that the common definition of toxic/heavy metals includes thallium, given that it has a higher acute toxicity than cadmium, lead, and mercury. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.46.151.226 (talk) 13:50, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Hey everyone. I'm not a chemist or toxicologist but I am extremely fascinated by the toxic metals and have been doing my utmost to add citations and correct symptoms on metals that have been documented improperly. The only issue I've run into so far is that the subsection on magnesium references a John Couper, who I presume is a French scientist from the 1800s judging by the cited link, but Mssr. Couper does not have his own page, and I do not speak French so I can't comb the journal to find more relevant information. I assume he is the same John Couper from the Glasgow Society since it also references magnesium, but I'm not sure if there's a way I can verify this. Any suggestions on leads to follow for perhaps creating a page for Couper or would it be better to remove the reference to him 'discovering' magnesium toxicity entirely? StapleTapeworms StapleTapeworms (talk) 19:14, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 10 January 2022 and 23 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sd1313 (article contribs).
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 August 2023 and 11 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Evefinal (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Biopsych13, Water is not wet 03.
— Assignment last updated by Ash.cobbler (talk) 15:28, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
The section below was removed by me. Radioactivity is the basis of the toxicity of radioactive elements, it seems
"Most often the definition of toxic metals includes at least thallium, cadmium, manganese, lead, mercury and the radioactive metals.[1] Metalloids (arsenic, polonium) may be included in the definition. Radioactive metals have both radiological toxicity and chemical toxicity." --Smokefoot (talk) 17:17, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
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