"The conventional approach to evaluating the impact of air pollution is to focus on a single exposure during a fixed period of time. But evidence suggests that contaminants work together, magnifying the damage to people's lungs. Conventional studies fail to probe synergistic effects. They also ignore the cumulative effects of lifelong exposures to pollutants, known as the exposome. Researchers need to shift away from single-pollutant studies and towards those involving a broad range of exposures."
"Exposomics can be integrated with genomics, epigenomics and metabolomics to reveal how gene-environment interactions contribute to lung-disease risk. This mode of analysis provides information, for example, on how the environment modulates gene expression through epigenetic alterations, and how these changes affect health. Exposomics also tracks the impact of exposures over time and across lifespan at a population level, thereby mapping cumulative and time-dependent effects."
People around the world are continuously exposed to toxic substances in the air from anthropogenic sources such as automobile and factory emissions, and from natural sources including wildfires and sand and dust storms. Rising global temperatures increase some natural contaminants, including allergens and microorganisms. Conventional single-pollutant studies miss synergistic interactions and the cumulative effects of lifelong exposures, the exposome. Exposomics integrated with genomics, epigenomics and metabolomics reveals gene–environment interactions, epigenetic modulation of gene expression, and population-level, time-dependent exposure impacts. Childhood exposures to specific chemicals and built-environment factors have been associated with reduced lung function.
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