For many years, humans have been aware that edible and non-edible marine products can contain toxins. Such harmful substances come from many sources, and this book deals with those which come from algal sources. Many people have eaten potentially toxic algae, but the problems come when the toxins build up in the food chain in the oceans or lakes and reach a toxic concentration in fish and shellfish. This book presents information on phycotoxins with special emphasis placed on the chemistry and biochemistry, and minor emphasis on the origin, toxicology and analytical methodology for toxins. The book discusses 16 phycotoxins.

This multi-authored book has been skilfully put together by Luis Botana, Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Santiago di Compostela. As with many such books, it suffers from some unevenness of coverage with some chapters considerably more detailed than others. Although the book markets itself on the basis of being the most up-to-date record available, many chapters do not have references after 2004. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on brevetoxins and maitotoxin (although the complete structure of maitotoxin being presented on the second page of the latter chapter almost put me off going further). The chapters are readable by the layman and offer enough interest for the serious researcher to make this an essential publication for anyone interested in phycotoxins. Personally, I am more interested in the toxicology and found it annoying that some chapters ignored this aspect, but the book does what it says in the title. It concentrates on the chemistry and biochemistry of these toxins.