PREFACE The present symposium is the successor of an earlier workshop on Recent Advances in Metal Toxicology: Uses of Nuclear Analytical Methods and Application of Ultrasensitive Detection Techniques, which was held at Brookhaven on October 11-12, 1982.* The aim of that workshop was to stimulate discussion between scientists working as biologists and those working on the development of new analytical techniques. The response to that workshop was very positive, and, as a result, we were encouraged to organize a second meeting. The intent was identical to the first meeting: to try to stimulate an exchange of ideas between workers in varied scientific fields. We tried to obtain contributions that described several fields and that related the biological interests to as many nuclear analytical techniques as possible. Our definition of nuclear analytical technique was purposely very flexible. An effort was made, however, to cover new methods and not to duplicate presentations given at established meetings. We hope that the results of the symposium presented here will stimulate the development of new collaborative research endeavors in both the biomedical and analytical fields.

Joel G. Pounds and Keith W. Jones

*The proceedingsare publishedin NeuroToxicology,Volume4 (1983).

BiologicalTraceElementResearch

Vol. 12, 1987