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Book Review
Book Review
Harry Salem and Sidney Katz, eds. Aerobiology—The Toxicology of
Airborne Pathogens and Toxins, Cambridge, United Kingdom: The
Royal Society of Chemistry, 2016: 494 pp., $281.19, PRINT
ISBN: 978-1-84973-594-0; PDF eISBN: 978-1-84973-791-3;
EPUB eISBN: 978-1-78262-783-8; ISSN: 1757-7179.
Reviewed by: John A. Budny, PharmaCal, Ltd, 31308 Via Colinas, Suite
107, Westlake Village, CA, USA
DOI: 10.1177/1091581816678191
At the same time I was preparing this book review on Aero-
biology—The Toxicology of Airborne Pathogens and Toxins
(ATAPT), I read in the lay press that on August 19, D. A.
Henderson, MD, had died.1 As soon as I learned of Dr Hender-
son’s passing, I checked ‘‘Chapter 2 Orthopoxviruses and
Animal Models for Pathogenesis, Vaccine and Drug Studies’’
to assure myself that he was recognized for his contribution to
medicine and for being responsible for leading the campaign of
eliminating a terrible infectious disease. Indeed he was, but it
would have been difficult to ignore his contribution since it was
historic and monumental. The chapter’s seventh reference was
a book Dr Henderson coedited and published almost 30 years
ago, entitled ‘‘The Pathogenesis, Pathology and Immunology
of Smallpox and Vaccinia Smallpox and its Eradication.’’
Any discussion of smallpox must be liberally sprinkled with
Dr Henderson’s name. He led the army of scientists and
clinicians that eradicated the worldwide scourge of smallpox,
which over 3,000 years caused the death of an estimated
2 million people per year, that is, a staggering 6.0  109 lives
lost to smallpox. I am humbled to dedicate this review of
ATAPT to Dr Donald Ainslie Henderson (September 7,
1928–August 19, 2016).
Aerobiology—The Toxicology of Airborne Pathogens and
Toxins is a gift to all toxicologists just as Dr Henderson’s
leadership on smallpox eradication was a gift to medicine and
humanity. The toxicologists’ friend is The Royal Society of
Chemistry (RSC).2 The RSC has an extensive journal and book
publishing effort and 1 part of that effort is a 25-title series
called ‘‘Issues in Toxicology.’’3 With a simple registration pro-
cess, many of the chapters in the series are open access.4 If,
however, a desired chapter does not have an open access
option, then the desired individual chapter can be purchased
without purchasing the entire book. While there are 25 titles in
the toxicology section, there are over 1,500 books available to
toxicologists who register. Many of these other titles and sub-
jects, which are not part of the Issues in Toxicology collection,
would be available to toxicologists, for example, Advances in
International Journal of Toxicology
2017, Vol. 36(1) 50-51
ª The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
journals.sagepub.com/home/ijt
Dermatological Sciences, Drug Design Strategies: Computa-
tional Techniques and Applications, Food Allergy and
Intolerance: Current Issues and Concerns, Metabolic
Profiling: Disease and Xenobiotics, and many more titles.
We toxicologists should tip our collective chapeaux to our
colleagues in the RSC.
A limited view of aerobiology is described as the ‘‘study of
living organisms and their components in air.’’5 In the first
chapter, ATAPT expanded the definition of aerobiology to
include biologic components in the atmosphere. With this
expanded definition, aerobiologic investigations can address
a more comprehensive list of potential toxins. Consequently,
aerobiology covers everything from inhalation toxicology,
environmental toxicology, and presently or formerly living
matter in the outer limits of the atmosphere.
Aerobiology became a scientific discipline with the found-
ing of the International Association of Aerobiology (IAA) in
1974.6 However, within the IAA and the scientific research
community, there seems to be a lack of adequate attention for
the biologic component of aerobiology. When I searched
PubMed7 for ‘‘aerobiology,’’ there were only 310 articles, 31
of which were review articles. When ‘‘bacteria,’’ ‘‘virus,’’ and
‘‘toxin’’ were added as filter terms to ‘‘aerobiology,’’ the num-
ber was reduced to 118, 29, and 20, respectively. Yet, aero-
biology either as a search term or as a research interest is
important, especially to toxicologists. At the same time, the
term ‘‘aerobiology’’ has not been adopted or used extensively.
Aerobiology—The Toxicology of Airborne Pathogens and
Toxins contains over 480 pages within 14 chapters. The 3 long-
est chapters ‘‘Inhalational Anthrax—Issues in Dose-Response
and Hazard Evaluation,’’ ‘‘Bacillus anthracis: An Aerobiolo-
gical Threat,’’ and ‘‘An Improved Model of Human Response
to Bioaerosol Exposure’’ constitute 40% of the book. The
remaining chapters cover poxviruses, botulinum neurotoxicity,
ricin, bioaerosol measurements, sample collection and manage-
ment, biologic warfare perspectives, physics of bioaerosols,
respiratory protection, human responses to bioaerosol expo-
sures, development of standard operating procedures for
responding to toxic bioaerosols, and modeling for bioaerosol
exposures.
The 2 editors and 35 chapter authors have put together, what
might appear to be with only a superficial view, a text on
biologic warfare materials. However, the chapter entitled
‘‘Bacillus anthracis: An aerobiological threat’’ is a specific
example that there is more to the book than a treatise on bio-
weapons. The 51-page chapter with its 268 references has only
1 small section which is a single but lengthy paragraph entitled
‘‘Anthrax as a biological weapon.’’ Perhaps, the authors should
Book Review
have used the word ‘‘hazard’’ instead of ‘‘threat’’ in the chap-
ter’s title. Not only do words have meaning, they also have
nuances. Other chapters, to varying degrees, contain sections
that lack a bioweapon focus. Chapter 8, ‘‘Detection of Airborne
Pathogens and Toxins’’ is the analytical portal for the aerobiol-
ogist, bioweaponry notwithstanding.
The case that the book is not a bioweapons book has no
better testament than the first chapter: ‘‘The Atmosphere: Its
Development, History and Contribution to Microbial Evolution
and Habitat.’’ This chapter could easily be the introduction
section of cosmology-focused treatise on what is life and how
did we get here or a scholarly work on the origin of life—where
astrobiology meets aerobiology. If you favor philosophical
leanings, then the chapter is just ‘‘a small step for a man, one
giant leap for mankind’’8 in initiating that philosophical dialog
with whomever will listen.
If you lack the interest or exploring where life came from,
you will still cherish the first chapter because it makes a case
for the distinction of the atmosphere as being a medium for
bacteria versus being a vehicle for relocating microorganisms.
If you are an atmosphere-as-a-vehicle toxicologist, then you
will find, along with our epidemiology colleagues, ‘‘Chapter
14 Programing an Agent-Based Model for Disease Dynamics
with Multiple Sources of Infection’’ interesting and one that
has an application unrelated to bioweaponry while addressing
the acute transmission of disease.
I found the Index to be the weakest aspect of the book. As an
example from ‘‘Chapter 5 The Structural Biology and Bio-
chemistry of the Ricin Toxin and the Military Use and Inhala-
tion Toxicology of Ricin Aerosols,’’ specifically section ‘‘5.5
Signs, Symptoms and Toxicity of Ricin Exposure’’ discusses
allergic reactions to ricin. Although the discussion centers
around the allergic reaction caused by ricin that is IgE
mediated, there is no entry in the Index for allergic (allergy),
IgE, or immune. I became suspicious of the indexing problem
when I realized that there were only 8 pages of index topics for
Note to Readers
Publishers who wish to submit books to be reviewed should
send their request for review along with the books directly to
book review editor. Occasionally, books and monographs are
published and reach the scientific community before publishers
send courtesy copies to IJT for consideration as a text to be
reviewed. If a reader would like a book or monograph reviewed
or would like to submit a review to be considered for publication
in IJT, please submit your book, suggestion or manuscript to:
View publication stats
51
486 pages of text. As enigmatic as this may be, it is easily
resolved by the reader with an electronic version of the book
that can be subjected to a word search using an appropriate
software.
This book is one that can easily be ignored because of its
title. To do so would be a mistake because there are perspec-
tives of toxicology that are offered which are not found in
standard toxicology texts. It is not that subject matter is revo-
lutionary but rather some often-addressed topics are done so in
a fresh way in ATAPT. Toxicologists, no matter where they are
going or from where they are coming, will find Aerobiology—
The Toxicology of Airborne Pathogens and Toxins valuable
and useful.
References
1. Hagerty JR. ‘‘D. A. Henderson Led Global Campaign to Wipe Out
Smallpox.’’ The Wall Street Journal. 2016. http://www.wsj.com/
articles/d-a-henderson-led-global-campaign-to-wipe-out-small
pox-1472223379. Accessed October 28, 2016.
2. The Royal Society of Chemistry. http://www.rsc.org/. Accessed
October 28, 2016.
3. RSC Books. http://pubs.rsc.org/en/ebooks#!key¼series-title&
value¼issues-in-toxicology. Accessed September 10, 2016.
4. Register for a free publishing personal account. http://pubs.rsc.org/
en/account/register. Accessed September 10, 2016.
5. Sattar SA. Indoor air as a vehicle for human pathogens: introduc-
tion, objectives, and expectation of outcome. Am J Infect Control.
2016;44(9):S95-S101.
6. International Association for Aerobiology. https://sites.google.
com/site/aerobiologyinternational/. Accessed October 28, 2016.
7. US National Library of Medicine’s PubMed. http://www.ncbi.nlm
.nih.gov/pubmed/. Accessed October 28, 2016.
8. Kaplan K. ‘‘Did Neil Armstrong really say, ‘That’s one small step
for a man’?’’ Los Angeles Times. 2013. http://www.latimes.com/
science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-neil-armstrong-one-small-step-for-a-
man-20150605-story.html. Accessed October 28, 2016.
Robert W. Kapp Jr., PhD, Fellow ATS
Book Review Editor
International Journal of Toxicology
BioTox
32 Riviera Drive
Monroe Township, NJ 08831-8891
Email: rwkapp@gmail.com