New techniques to help understand the impact of the environment on human health

Disease is usually caused by some combination of genetic and environmental factors, where the environment may include everything from the food we eat to pollutants in the air we breathe. We can investigate the role of environmental risk factors through experimental toxicology or observational epidemiological studies. In deciding whether a particular environmental exposure causes a disease we typically consider the totality of epidemiological and toxicological data along with any mechanistic insights into the disease process. Understanding the environmental causes of a disease is the first step towards prevention.

In epidemiological studies the concept of the “exposome” – all external and internal exposures experienced by an individual during their lifetime and how these exposures relate to health markers – is emerging. Low-cost external sensors and available “big data” sources are being developed to measure external exposures, and omic-based biomarker analysis for internal markers. During the presentation I will describe some of our research that’s focussed on developing new techniques to characterise exposure in epidemiological studies. It will include work on air pollution being carried out in China, UV exposure in Britain and other situations.