Mission

Our Goals

The project’s main aim is to predict individual disease risk related to the environment, by characterizing the external and internal exposome for common exposures (air and drinking water contaminants) during critical periods of life, including in utero.The ultimate goal is to use the new tools in risk assessment and in the estimation of the burden of environmental disease. 

Our Cause

Although environmental (i.e. non-genetic) exposures account for the majority of diseases, currently there is no standard or systematic way to measure the influence of environmental exposures on health. The linkage with disease risks opens the way to what are defined here as ‘exposome-wide association studies’ (EWAS).

Our actions

We are looking to develop an increased understanding through developing a personal exposure monitoring (PEM) system. PEM will include sensors, smartphones, geo-referencing, satellites which will collect data on individual external exposome as well as analyse biological samples (internal markers of external exposures) using multiple “omic” technologies.

Our impact

Research into the relationships between external exposures (as measured by PEM, which has not previously been used in large scale studies) and global profiles of molecular features (as measured by omics) in the same individuals. This constitutes a novel advance towards the development of "next generation exposure assessment" for environmental chemicals and their mixtures.