{"id":339513,"date":"2025-06-05T17:17:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T11:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/?p=339513"},"modified":"2025-06-06T10:39:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T05:09:12","slug":"human-exposomics-approach-can-improve-public-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/human-exposomics-approach-can-improve-public-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Human exposomics approach can improve public health"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source<\/strong>: The post Human exposomics approach can improve public health has been created, based on the article \u201cExposomics for better environmental health<\/strong>\u201d published in \u201cThe Hindu<\/strong>\u201d on 5 June 2025. Human exposomics approach can improve public health.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Human<\/p>\n

UPSC Syllabus Topic:<\/strong> GS Paper2-governance-Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector\/Services relating to Health. AND GS Paper3- Environment<\/p>\n

Context<\/strong>: World Environment Day 2025 focuses on ending plastic pollution. This brings attention to invisible hazards like microplastics, which cannot be detected with current technologies. India, bearing 25% of the global environmental disease burden, must adopt integrated, science-based approaches like exposomics<\/em> to reduce health risks and healthcare costs.<\/p>\n

The Growing Environmental Disease Burden<\/strong><\/h2>\n
    \n
  1. India<\/strong>\u2019<\/strong>s Alarming Health Impact: <\/strong>India faces nearly three million deaths and over 100 million DALYs from occupational and environmental health (OEH) risks. Air pollution and solid fuel use are leading contributors.<\/li>\n
  2. Global Estimates from GBD 2021: <\/strong>The Global Burden of Disease study in 2021 attributed 18.9% of global deaths and 14.4% of DALYs to OEH risks. PM2.5 caused 4.7 million deaths, and household air pollution led to 3.1 million.<\/li>\n
  3. Link to Chronic Diseases: <\/strong>In India, OEH risks are responsible for more than 50% of non-communicable disease burdens such as heart disease, stroke, asthma, COPD, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease.<\/li>\n
  4. Severe Effects on Children: <\/strong>Lead exposure in children under five results in high IQ loss. India alone accounts for 154 million IQ points lost\u201420% of the global estimate.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Gaps in Current Risk Assessments<\/strong><\/h2>\n
      \n
    1. Limited Range of Factors: <\/strong>Current GBD assessments include only around 11 environmental risks due to a lack of human exposure data. Missing categories include microplastics, chemical mixtures, and noise pollution.<\/li>\n
    2. Overlooked Interactions: <\/strong>Environmental risks interact with metabolic, behavioral, genetic, and social factors in complex ways. Single-risk estimates miss these synergies.<\/li>\n
    3. Amplified Risks from Climate Change: <\/strong>Climate change worsens heat, air pollution, storms, floods, and vector-borne diseases. It also impacts food systems and mental health, especially in underserved populations.<\/li>\n
    4. Inadequate Models for Policy: <\/strong>Because many risks and their interactions are unaccounted for, current disease burden estimates are conservative and not useful for prioritizing scalable prevention strategies.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Exposomics: A Holistic Solution<\/strong><\/h2>\n
        \n
      1. Beyond Genetics: <\/strong>Genetics alone explains less than half the risk for common diseases. Genome mapping led to the idea of the exposome, which tracks all life-long exposures affecting health.<\/li>\n
      2. What the Exposome Captures: <\/strong>The exposome includes exposures from chemical, biological, physical, and psycho-social environments. It studies how these interact with diet, lifestyle, and biology to influence disease.<\/li>\n
      3. Technologies Enabling Exposomics: <\/strong>It uses wearable sensors, untargeted biomonitoring, organs-on-chips, and AI for exposure-wide association studies (EWAS) to match genome-wide models.<\/li>\n
      4. Urgent Need for Data Infrastructure: <\/strong>For exposomics to work, interoperable and accessible data ecosystems are essential. Harmonised repositories must support long-term collaboration.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        India<\/strong>\u2019<\/strong>s Opportunity for Integration<\/strong><\/h2>\n
          \n
        1. Time to Leap Ahead: <\/strong>Though challenging, India can adopt exposomics through its strength in digital and data-driven public health. It enables early disease prediction and low-cost care.<\/li>\n
        2. Embedding Environmental Health: <\/strong>By aligning environmental and health systems, India can reduce chronic disease and improve preventive care efficiency.<\/li>\n
        3. Towards a Healthier Future: <\/strong>India must engage with the global exposome movement. Future Environment Days may celebrate the exposome as the key to achieving health equity and prevention.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Question for practice:<\/strong><\/p>\n

          Examine<\/strong> how the concept of the human exposome can help address the limitations of current environmental health risk assessments in India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Source: The post Human exposomics approach can improve public health has been created, based on the article \u201cExposomics for better environmental health\u201d published in \u201cThe Hindu\u201d on 5 June 2025. Human exposomics approach can improve public health. UPSC Syllabus Topic: GS Paper2-governance-Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector\/Services relating to Health. AND GS… Continue reading Human exposomics approach can improve public health<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":339591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230],"tags":[300,212,10498],"class_list":["post-339513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","tag-governance","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Human-exposomics-approach-can-improve-public-health.png?fit=1280%2C850&ssl=1","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}