Free radicals have been incriminated in a variety of injurious processes including the toxicity of the herbicide paraquat and the damage following ischemia and reperfusion of different organs. Based on the assumption that iron and copper could serve as mediators for the transformation of relatively low reactive species (such as superoxide radicals, hydrogen peroxide, ascorbate, and others) to the highly reactive species, in the site-specific metal-mediated mechanism, two new modes for intervention have been tried out. The first is the introduction of specific chelators that "pull" out redox-active and available metals, and by this reduce the apparent damage. Desferrioxamine was shown to protect bacterial cells and mammals against the poisonous effects of paraquat. Using the retrogradly perfused isolated rat heart, we have demonstrated that the chelator neocuproine, which effectively binds both iron and copper provides a major protection against hydrogen peroxide-induced cardiac damage and against ischemia/reperfusion-induced arrhythmias. Likewise, TPEN a heavy metal chelator, provides almost total (greater than 90%) protection against ischemia/reperfusion-induced arrhythmias. The other mode of intervention is the use of redox-inactive metal ions that could compete for the binding sites of iron and copper, and by this "push" these metal ions out, lead to their displacement, and divert the site of free radical attack. Applying Zn(II) complexes provided a marked protection against metal mediated free radical-induced damage in the copper-mediated paraquat toxicity to E. coli, and in the arrhythmias induced by ischemia and reperfusion. It is proposed that the complex zinc-desferrioxamine would be the ultimate protector being effective by both the "pull" and "push" mechanisms.