SyracuseCoE Research & Technology Forum: The “Biological Embedding” of Environmental Exposure Harm in Children

Join SyracuseCoE for a Research & Technology Forum on April 9th, featuring a presentation from Brooks Gump, Falk Family Endowed Professor of Public Health at Syracuse University.

Exposure to particulate matter (PM) impacts the development of diseases such as cardiovascular disease (CVD; ~10% increased risk for long-term exposures) and asthma among children (OR = 1.23). An estimated 3.8 million deaths per year, worldwide, are attributable to poor indoor air quality and associated heavy metal exposures. Currently, interventions to reduce heavy metal exposures have largely focused on a “high risk approach” to prevention, implementing potentially costly and/or harmful approaches (e.g., chelation) that target those with levels rising to the level of “poisoning”. Although these approaches are important, they impact only a small proportion of the population, namely, those with high exposures. However, given the facts – 1) metals have half-lives in the body in the range of a few days to a few months, 2) metals affect the cardiovascular system even at low-levels, and 3) CVD is a disease that develops over many years – we should turn our attention to preventing chronic low-level heavy metal exposures, moving to a “population-level approach” for prevention of metal-induced chronic diseases. Evidence for “biological embedding” of toxicant exposures will be reviewed, followed by a discussion of two novel population-level primary prevention interventions being proposed.

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