review · Journal of public health research
Environmental contaminants cause significant illness and death worldwide, while conventional treatments and remediation strategies face critical limitations. Plant-derived secondary metabolites, known as phytochemicals, offer promising therapeutic and preventive alternatives to counter these toxic effects. Major classes such as flavonoids, tannins, saponins, alkaloids, cardenoloids, terpenoids, and phytosteroids display diverse biological activities. Evidence from laboratory research, clinical trials, and epidemiological studies demonstrates that these compounds provide anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-metastatic, and anti-ageing protection against environmental toxicant damage. Maximising the protective value of these natural substances requires systematic pharmaceutical optimisation. Future research must concentrate on isolating specific bioactive molecules within plant compounds and assessing their targeted performance against exposure to complex mixtures of environmental contaminants.
Pollution and environmental toxicants contribute heavily to global disease and mortality, while current remedies remain inadequate. Plant-derived substances present viable, multi-target options to protect human health from toxic exposures. Understanding how these natural compounds act against environmental damage helps researchers develop safer, accessible interventions to mitigate the widespread biological harm caused by industrial and environmental pollution.
The findings point towards applications in drug discovery and therapeutic formulations developed by pharmaceutical and nutraceutical manufacturers. Because the work is a review synthesising laboratory studies and clinical trials alongside calls to identify specific bioactive molecules and test against mixture toxicity, the technology remains at an early to intermediate research stage requiring substantial optimisation and compound validation before market-ready products emerge.
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Toxicity arising from environmental contaminants has attracted global interest in the last few decades, due to the high morbidity and mortality associated with them. Efforts have been made to combat the consequential outcomes of environmental toxicity in humans through traditional remediation techniques and therapeutic measures which have been hampered by one or more limitations. Consequently, this scenario has triggered interest in the medicinal properties of phytochemicals. Thus, this review gives a succinct and in-depth elucidation of the various environmental contaminants and their toxicity effects on humans. It delves into the various classes of phytochemicals and their intervention roles. The study adopted a desk review of existing literatures from scientific reports and peer reviewed articles through triangulation of data sources. "Phytochemicals" are group of secondary metabolites obtained from plants with medicinal properties. These groups of compounds are included but not limited to flavonoids, tannins, saponins, alkaloids, cardenoloids, terpenoids, and phytosteroids. This review corroborates the prophylactic and therapeutics efficacy of these phytochemicals as anti-metastatic, anti-inflammatory, anti-aging, anti-oxidant, anti-microbial and live saving substances with empirical findings from several laboratory, clinical trials and epidemiologic studies. It conclude that given the wide range of medicinal properties of phytochemicals, there is an urgent need for its full optimization in the pharmaceutical industry and future studies should focus on identifying the bioactive molecules in these compounds and its effectiveness against mixer toxicity.
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DOI: 10.1177/22799036231181226
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