Investigates the compound formation, bioactivation, and detoxification of the N-nitroso group of compounds, which increasingly appears to be implicated in human carcinogenesis. The topics include exposure, formation, and blocking; nitric oxide; nitrosamine; toxic, mutagenic, and carcinogenic effects; and reactive intermediates. The 45 papers largely report on research rather than review the literature. The symposium that occasioned them was in Washington, DC, in August 1992. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Originally published in 1992, this volume looks in depth at the carcinogenic properties of N-nitroso compounds. These compounds occur widely in smoked foods and in meat and fish cured with nitrates; they are also formed in some industrial processes and in addition are found in cosmetics, tobacco and tobacco smoke. By focusing on the chemical and biological properties, the volume attempts to explain how these compounds exert their carcinogenic potential and, furthermore, goes on to explain how apparently harmless precursors such as nitrates and amines are transformed to produce carcinogens.

Interest in the role of N-nitroso compounds in human cancer has magnified due to the widespread use of these compounds in all branches of carcinogenesis research. Here, a knowledge of the chemistry of N-nitrosation is necessary in order to understand the association between N-nitrosamines and human disease. This book opens with a discussion of the problems associated with the analysis of volatile N-nitrosamines, of the various groups of non-volatile N-nitroso compounds and of the apparent total N-nitroso compounds. This is followed by chapters on the chemistry of N-nitroso compounds and of N-nitrosation, on the mechanisms of the endogenous formation of N-nitroso compounds and on the occurrence of N-nitroso-amines and their precursors in the human environment. The next chapter reviews the toxico- logy of N-nitroso compounds in animals or in vitro assay systems considering acute and chronic toxicity, carcinogenicity and teratogenicity of N-nitroso-peptides and N-nitroso bile acids. The penultimate chapter deals with the evidence implicating N- nitroso compounds in human cancer, particularly of the stomach and urinary bladder but also of other sites. The final chapter is concerned with prospects for the future, particularly of N- nitroso compounds and human cancer.

This book provides for the first time a single comprehensive source of information on the analytical chemistry of nicotine and related alkaloids. The editors have brought together scientists from academia and the tobacco industry to describe the state-of-the-art of the chemistry and analytical methods for measurement of nicotine. Both the scope and detail of the book are impressive. Chapters describe the history, pharmacology and toxicology of nicotine, the biosynthesis of nicotine and other alkaloids in the tobacco plant, the general chemistry of nicotine and the analytical methodologies that have been used to measure nicotine and related alkaloids in biological specimens, in tobacco and pharmaceutical products and in tobacco smoke. There is also a comprehensive review of the chemistry and toxicology of nicotine-derived nitrosamines, an important class of tobacco carcinogens.

During the early 1930s, when I was a graduate student and later a post-doctoral researcher at the National Research Council for the University of Wisconsin at Madison, we had the opportunity to get acquainted with many graduate students from China who were sent to the University for training in modern basic sciences as well as social sciences. The University of Wisconsin continues to graduate a large number of Chinese students. Economic conditions in the 1930s were very precarious for the United States and other parts of the world. Many of us students grew closer together because we were living on similarly tight budgets. As a matter of fact, we subleased a part of our apartment in Madison to some Chinese graduate students. This was a very nice opportunity for us to learn about the scientific and cultural back ground of our Chinese friends. Many of them came from the interior of China and had had very little opportunity to become acquainted with people from a western culture. Living with these students was a very pleasant and educational experience which gave us a good pic ture of the cultural life and educational system of China at that time--an intimate picture that one normally would not see without travelling in that country.