A Global Analysis of Research Outputs on Neurotoxicants from 2011–2020: Adverse Effects on Humans and the Environment

Abstract

Neurotoxicants are detrimental to the mammalian nervous system at higher concentrations after exposure, and could result in several neurological abnormalities, especially on the nervous and reproductive systems, and sometimes death. The present study, therefore, aimed to evaluate the research growth on neurotoxicants and their effects on humans and the environment over the last decade from 2011 to 2020. Data on this subject were obtained from the SCI-Expanded of Web of Science, and analyses were performed on the retrieved data in RStudio. The number of published documents fluctuated over the studied years, with an annual growth rate of 4.46%, and the highest number of publications were recorded in 2020 (n = 40). Single authored documents, documents per author, authors per documents, and collaboration index were 24, 0.219, 4.57, and 4.87, respectively. Networks of collaboration in this study were noticeable among authors, institutions, and countries; thus, making efforts to strengthen networking globally would be a good idea. Results from this study also show that the growing trend of research in the field is quite encouraging, thus providing future directions to upcoming researchers, and contributes immensely to reducing the exposure and several disorders linked to these neurotoxicants globally.

Keywords

• developmental neurotoxicity
• oxidative stress
• neurotoxicants
• Parkinson’s disease
• neurological disorders
• children