Overview of health risk assessments for zinc.

Zinc is an essential trace mineral nutrient required for growth and reproduction in man and other living organisms. Zinc deficiency has been identified as global public health issue that significantly impacts developing countries; as a result, zinc essentiality and the impacts of deficiency have been extensively studied. Zinc is also widely used in commercial products and is a high-production-volume industrial metal. This has provided opportunities for human exposure and prompted multiple assessments of adverse health impacts that might result from exposure excess. Zinc thus provides an illustrative case study of the methodological contrasts between nutritional and toxicological evaluations and highlights the need for risk assessment guidelines that may be tailored to accommodate the properties of essential trace elements.