Among the activities of the essential trace element selenium is the ability to reduce the toxicity of metal ions. Toxicity from metals is increasing due to the extensive release from industrial, agricultural, chemical, domestic, and technological sources, which in turn contaminate the water, soil, and air.
Selenium binds with many toxic minerals such as arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury and facilitates their excretion from the body.
Selenium is known to function as an antagonist to counteract the toxicity of metals. It has been suggested that like mercury, silver and cadmium also form a complex with selenium, and the resultant complex binds to plasma proteins in rats. Similarly, interaction with selenium was also reported for a number of metals such as copper, lead, platinum, tin, and thallium in experimental animals.
By detoxifying per oxidized fats, via its role in the enzyme glutathione and peroxidase, selenium inhibits their carcinogenicity (cancer promoting traits). Selenium also counteracts many of the toxic effects of smoking tobacco.
Detoxification often depends on the metabolic reduction of selenium to hydrogen selenide; the mechanism generally advanced to explain such selenium/metal interactions is that selenide combines with heavy metal ions to give a metal selenide which is metabolically inert.
Selenium in detoxification of toxic minerals
