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Evolution of environmental exposure science: Using breath-borne biomarkers for “discovery” of the human exposome
Citation:
Pleil, J. AND M. Stiegel. Evolution of environmental exposure science: Using breath-borne biomarkers for “discovery” of the human exposome. Analytical Chemistry. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, 85(21):9984-9990, (2013).
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory′s (NERL′s) Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division (HEASD) conducts research in support of EPA′s mission to protect human health and the environment. HEASD′s research program supports Goal 1 (Clean Air) and Goal 4 (Healthy People) of EPA′s strategic plan. More specifically, our division conducts research to characterize the movement of pollutants from the source to contact with humans. Our multidisciplinary research program produces Methods, Measurements, and Models to identify relationships between and characterize processes that link source emissions, environmental concentrations, human exposures, and target-tissue dose. The impact of these tools is improved regulatory programs and policies for EPA.
Description:
According to recent research, 70-90% of long-term latency and chronic human disease incidence is attributable to environmental (human exposome) factors through the gene x environment interaction. Environmental exposures are complex and involve many thousands of chemicals, a multitude of sources, different exposure pathways, and generally occur at low levels and varying timeframes over a lifetime. As such, environmental exposure science is evolving from the “one exposure, one adverse effect” mindset to a “discovery” approach that incorporates broadly stratified suites of environmental and human biomarker measurements and their cumulative perturbations to the human systems biology. The newest approaches now exploit exhaled breath analysis as a non-invasive alternative for assessing exposure and health status. In this feature article, we focus on breath-based methods for community centered studies and public health applications.