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Heavy Metal Index

Iron (Fe)

Metal

Iron is essential for hemoglobin, myoglobin, heme enzymes, and mitochondrial enzymes.

Page snapshot
Corpus sources on this metal172

Overview

Iron is essential for hemoglobin, myoglobin, heme enzymes, and mitochondrial enzymes. Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021 attaches iron to the wiki as both an essential nutrient and a toxicity concern through acute poisoning and chronic iron overload.

Status

This page is a source-map stub created during the re-ingest of Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021. Substantive iron-specific expansion awaits a dedicated iron ingest.

Frequently asked questions

What does iron do in the body?

Iron is an essential nutrient. It is required for hemoglobin, myoglobin, heme enzymes, and mitochondrial enzymes, according to Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021.

Can iron be toxic even though it’s an essential nutrient?

Yes. Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021 attaches iron to the wiki as both an essential nutrient and a toxicity concern. The two toxicity pathways it identifies are acute iron poisoning and chronic iron overload.

What are the main ways iron causes harm?

The page identifies two mechanisms of iron toxicity: acute poisoning and chronic iron overload, as described in Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021. The page does not yet detail dose levels, affected populations, or specific health outcomes for either pathway.

Does this page cover iron levels in specific foods or products?

Not yet. This is a source-map stub created during the re-ingest of Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021, and substantive iron-specific expansion awaits a dedicated iron ingest. Only one source is currently attached to the page.

Sources

  • Ufelle & Barchowsky 2021 — Ufelle AC, Barchowsky A, 2021. Toxic Effects of Metals, Ch 23 in Casarett & Doull’s Essentials of Toxicology, 4th ed.

References

Works cited in this page’s text, in first-appearance order. This is not the full corpus for this page; it is only what the prose above draws on. The complete set of sources is listed under Sources below. Each title links to its source record, which carries the ingest receipt, the extracted values, and the file hash of the document it was built from.

  1. Toxic Effects of Metals (Chapter 23), in Casarett & Doull’s Essentials of Toxicology, Fourth EditionUfelle AC and Barchowsky A · Casarett & Doull’s Essentials of Toxicology, Fourth Edition. McGraw Hill Education · 2021 · www.mhprofessional.comTextbook

Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.

CommitDateChangeDescription
a8052bb2026-08-09major1 source added; contamination-profile values revised; 10 sections added