The Environmental Exposome And Health

ENVESOME aims to elucidate mechanistically the role of air, noise, light, and hazardous waste pollution in non-communicable disease development.

The project addresses the need to strengthen the knowledge available to policymakers regarding pollution-disease associations and causal mechanisms at different phases throughout the human lifecycle.

ENVESOME proposes to develop an exposome and citizen-science-based framework for assessing the risks of emerging environmental health stressors. This will be achieved by fusing environmental monitoring and personal exposure data and models through AI tools.

Human and cell biology knowledge, human biomonitoring, and in vitro data will be used to determine adverse outcome pathways and networks associated with environmental stressors.

Particular focus will be paid to intersecting pathways relevant to cardiorespiratory disease; metabolic syndrome; neurotoxicity; immunotoxicity; sleep, and mental health disorders. We aim to elucidate the main sources of environmental exposure and drivers of the adverse outcomes above.

This will allow for the articulation of cost-effective mitigation strategies that will be applied in select case studies.

Their efficacy will be evaluated using environmental and exposure indicators together with early effect biomarkers (EEB).

Methodological and technical innovations and the respective scientific evidence regarding the causal links between emerging environmental stressors and human health will be translated into policy proposals supporting the articulation of strategies for country- or city-specific, targeted and cost-effective interventions, thus promoting effective public health protection, as well as guidelines and updated limit values as needed.

Environmental management for public health protection will be supported by a decision support system (for policy makers), a chatbot (for health practitioners), and a mobile app (for citizens). Training on novel tools will be given to all relevant actors.