Cell hydration as a universal marker for detection of environmental pollution

At present, when the technological progress brings progressive increase in environmental pollutions by different chemical and physical (ionizing and non-ionizing radiations) factors, the detection of the safety of environmental medium from the point of public health is one of the fundamental problems of modern Life Sciences. This problem has especially disquieting character after the Chernobyl and Japan nuclear catastrophes, when the level of background ionizing radiation and chemical pollutions of environmental medium of the number of world's regions are increased beyond safety doses. As the biological effect of weak environmental factors have nonlinear dose-dependent character, besides its thermodynamic characteristics it depends also on environmental composition and initial state of organism. Therefore, the current policy of World Health Organization and other international organizations whose mission is to establish safety standards for environmental pollutions by chemical and physical factors, based only on the their concentration or energy absorption rate by organism cannot be considered as adequate. It is suggested that the biological marker having universal sensitivity to different factors and determining the functional state of organisms could be used for estimation of the safety doses of environmental factors on organism. In present review are presented the data consisting of the hypothesis according to which the Na/K pump and Na/Ca-controlling cell hydration could serve as a universal and extra-sensitive cellular marker for detection of hazardous effect of environmental pollutions.