Tools for Measuring Personal Environmental Exposures
Tools for Measuring Personal Environmental Exposures
Exposures that cause chronic diseases usually take place years, perhaps decades, before disease is diagnosed. Biomarkers collected at single points of time therefore cannot tell the whole story of how disease occurs in an individual. For that, one must look to the "exposome," or the compilation of exposures experienced over an individual's lifetime. But efforts to link environmental exposures to disease have been stymied by the difficulty of accurately measuring those day-to-day exposures and the substances that are present in people's bodies.
The term "exposome" was initially coined in 2005 by Christopher Wild, who now directs the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in recognition of the failure of genetic factors to explain most variability in human diseases. The exposome concept reflects the reality that people are exposed to potentially health-impairing agents from both pollution and nonpollution sources, including industrial chemicals, combustion emissions, radiation, heat/cold, noise, and food. The exposome also includes behavioral factors, such as activity levels and responses to stress. Finally, an individual's exposome includes his or her microbiome, or vast personalized assembly of commensal microbes. All these exposures and factors can vary over the course of a day, not to mention over the weeks, months, and years that make up a lifetime.
In the last few years, tools and methodologies have begun to emerge that hold promise for more easily capturing information about at least some of the environmental exposures that an individual may come into contact with over the course of his or her lifetime. The new tools come from a wide range of disciplines—some of which fall outside the usual domain of environmental health—and they are already helping researchers amass data on real-world exposures. These tools also hold promise for conducting studies that uncover unexpected links between environmental exposures and disease.
Several of the most promising tools and approaches were discussed at a workshop of the National Academies' Emerging Science for Environmental Health Decisions committee in December 2011. Some of these tools are already helping researchers get a handle on how environ-mental factors contribute to important health risks, including cardiovascular disease and cancer, says Steve Rappaport, director of the Center for Exposure Biology at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, who organized the workshop.
Abstract and Introduction
Introduction
Exposures that cause chronic diseases usually take place years, perhaps decades, before disease is diagnosed. Biomarkers collected at single points of time therefore cannot tell the whole story of how disease occurs in an individual. For that, one must look to the "exposome," or the compilation of exposures experienced over an individual's lifetime. But efforts to link environmental exposures to disease have been stymied by the difficulty of accurately measuring those day-to-day exposures and the substances that are present in people's bodies.
The term "exposome" was initially coined in 2005 by Christopher Wild, who now directs the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in recognition of the failure of genetic factors to explain most variability in human diseases. The exposome concept reflects the reality that people are exposed to potentially health-impairing agents from both pollution and nonpollution sources, including industrial chemicals, combustion emissions, radiation, heat/cold, noise, and food. The exposome also includes behavioral factors, such as activity levels and responses to stress. Finally, an individual's exposome includes his or her microbiome, or vast personalized assembly of commensal microbes. All these exposures and factors can vary over the course of a day, not to mention over the weeks, months, and years that make up a lifetime.
In the last few years, tools and methodologies have begun to emerge that hold promise for more easily capturing information about at least some of the environmental exposures that an individual may come into contact with over the course of his or her lifetime. The new tools come from a wide range of disciplines—some of which fall outside the usual domain of environmental health—and they are already helping researchers amass data on real-world exposures. These tools also hold promise for conducting studies that uncover unexpected links between environmental exposures and disease.
Several of the most promising tools and approaches were discussed at a workshop of the National Academies' Emerging Science for Environmental Health Decisions committee in December 2011. Some of these tools are already helping researchers get a handle on how environ-mental factors contribute to important health risks, including cardiovascular disease and cancer, says Steve Rappaport, director of the Center for Exposure Biology at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, who organized the workshop.
