The Exposome and Chronic Diseases such as Cancer, Diabetes, and Asthma

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The Exposome and Chronic Diseases

The exposome encompasses the totality of environmental influences experienced throughout a person’s life and the biological responses produced by those influences. It includes chemical pollutants, diet, physical activity, infections, climate, occupation, housing, stress, social inequality, consumer products, and features of the built environment.

Exposome research complements genetics by examining why people with similar genetic backgrounds can develop very different health outcomes. Scientists increasingly use biomonitoring, wearable sensors, geographic information, questionnaires, metabolomics, epigenetics, microbiome analysis, and other technologies to connect complex combinations of exposures with cancer, diabetes, asthma, and additional chronic diseases.

Understanding the Exposome

The exposome begins before birth and continues to change throughout childhood, adulthood, and aging. Exposures may accumulate over time, interact with one another, or produce especially strong effects during sensitive developmental periods.

Researchers commonly distinguish between several interconnected components:

  • The general external exposome, including climate, urbanization, social conditions, and economic circumstances
  • The specific external exposome, including pollutants, occupational agents, diet, tobacco smoke, medicines, infections, and consumer chemicals
  • The internal exposome, including inflammation, oxidative stress, metabolism, hormones, immune activity, epigenetic changes, and the microbiome

Rather than examining one pollutant or behavior at a time, exposomics investigates combinations of exposures and the biological pathways through which they influence health.

Cancer and the Exposome

Cancer develops through interactions among genetic susceptibility, environmental exposures, biological aging, behavior, and social conditions. The cancer exposome includes air pollution, tobacco smoke, radiation, infectious agents, occupational carcinogens, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, diet, alcohol, obesity, stress, and neighborhood conditions.

Important environmental and occupational carcinogens include:

  • Asbestos
  • Radon
  • Benzene
  • Arsenic
  • Diesel exhaust
  • Outdoor air pollution
  • Crystalline silica
  • Formaldehyde
  • Certain pesticides and industrial chemicals
  • Ultraviolet and ionizing radiation

Researchers are developing the concept of a cancer exposome atlas to connect lifetime exposures with biomarkers, molecular pathways, tumor development, treatment outcomes, and cancer disparities.

Different cancers have distinctive exposure profiles. Tobacco smoke, radon, asbestos, and air pollution are important components of the lung-cancer exposome. Hormonal exposures, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, alcohol, occupation, air pollution, and reproductive history may contribute to the breast-cancer exposome. Diet, obesity, physical inactivity, alcohol, medications, and the gut microbiome are studied as elements of the colorectal-cancer exposome.

Infectious exposures are also significant. Human papillomavirus can cause cervical and other cancers, hepatitis viruses can contribute to liver cancer, and Helicobacter pylori infection is an important cause of stomach cancer.

Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolic Disease

The metabolic exposome includes chemical, nutritional, behavioral, social, occupational, and neighborhood influences on obesity, insulin resistance, and diabetes.

Environmental chemicals investigated in relation to metabolic disease include:

  • Persistent organic pollutants
  • PFAS
  • Phthalates
  • Bisphenols
  • Arsenic and other metals
  • Pesticides
  • Flame retardants
  • Plastic-associated chemicals
  • Microplastics

Some chemicals are described as environmental obesogens because they may alter fat-cell development, appetite regulation, endocrine signaling, or energy metabolism. Other exposures may interfere with pancreatic function, insulin signaling, thyroid hormones, lipid metabolism, or glucose regulation.

Dietary exposures—including ultra-processed foods, food additives, artificial sweeteners, processed meats, food-packaging chemicals, and pesticide residues—may also contribute to metabolic disease. Diet additionally influences the gut microbiome, inflammation, and the internal production of metabolites associated with diabetes.

Social and built-environment conditions affect metabolic health through food access, walkability, green space, neighborhood deprivation, housing stability, health-care access, physical activity opportunities, and chronic stress. Air pollution, transportation noise, extreme heat, sleep disruption, artificial light at night, and shift work are also being studied as contributors to diabetes.

Asthma, Allergy, and Respiratory Disease

The respiratory exposome includes the numerous exposures that influence lung development, airway inflammation, immune function, asthma onset, and disease exacerbations.

Major respiratory exposures include:

  • Outdoor and indoor air pollution
  • Traffic-related pollution
  • Wildfire smoke
  • Ozone
  • Tobacco smoke and electronic-cigarette aerosols
  • Mold and dampness
  • Dust mites, pests, and animal allergens
  • Pollen
  • Cleaning products and fragrances
  • Occupational dusts, fumes, and chemicals
  • Respiratory infections
  • Housing conditions
  • Psychosocial stress

Pregnancy and early childhood may be especially sensitive periods. Prenatal tobacco smoke, maternal air-pollution exposure, chemicals, diet, stress, antibiotics, infections, and microbial environments can influence fetal lung growth and childhood immune development.

Climate change can intensify respiratory exposures by increasing heat, ozone, wildfire smoke, drought, flooding, mold, dust, and the duration of pollen seasons. Thunderstorms can rupture pollen grains and create concentrated airborne allergen particles capable of producing severe community asthma outbreaks.

Housing and occupational conditions also contribute to unequal asthma risks. Moisture, mold, pests, smoke, poor ventilation, traffic pollution, disinfectants, agricultural dust, construction materials, and industrial chemicals can initiate or aggravate respiratory disease.

Environmental Mixtures and Shared Disease Mechanisms

People are rarely exposed to one environmental factor in isolation. Air pollution may occur alongside noise, heat, occupational stress, poor housing, and limited access to health care. Chemical mixtures can include pesticides, metals, PFAS, plasticizers, flame retardants, and combustion products.

Many different exposures converge on shared biological mechanisms, including:

  • Chronic inflammation
  • Oxidative stress
  • DNA damage
  • Epigenetic changes
  • Endocrine disruption
  • Mitochondrial dysfunction
  • Altered immune regulation
  • Microbiome disruption
  • Abnormal cellular signaling
  • Accelerated biological aging

These mechanisms help explain how different exposures can contribute to multiple diseases. Chronic inflammation, for example, is involved in cancer progression, insulin resistance, and airway injury. Oxidative stress can damage DNA, impair glucose regulation, and worsen respiratory inflammation.

Measuring the Exposome

Measuring a lifetime of changing exposures is one of the central challenges of exposome research. Scientists combine traditional epidemiology with new environmental and biological measurement technologies.

Important tools include:

  • Biomonitoring of blood, urine, breath, and other biological samples
  • High-resolution mass spectrometry
  • Metabolomics
  • Proteomics
  • Lipidomics
  • Transcriptomics
  • Adductomics
  • DNA-methylation analysis
  • Microbiome profiling
  • Wearable exposure sensors
  • Personal air-pollution monitors
  • Geographic and spatial-exposure mapping
  • Questionnaires and health records
  • Machine learning and artificial intelligence

Exposome-wide association studies systematically test numerous exposures for relationships with disease. Statistical methods must account for correlated exposures, mixtures, multiple comparisons, confounding, and differences among population groups.

Non-targeted chemical analysis expands research beyond familiar pollutants by screening biological or environmental samples for thousands of known and unknown compounds.

Lifespan and Early-Life Exposures

Exposome research uses a life-course approach because the timing of an exposure can be as important as its intensity. Pregnancy, infancy, childhood, adolescence, working life, and older age represent different biological and social exposure periods.

Maternal nutrition, tobacco smoke, toxicants, air pollution, stress, infections, and neighborhood conditions can influence fetal development. These exposures may produce lasting changes in immune regulation, metabolism, lung development, and epigenetic programming.

Childhood exposures affect growth, obesity, asthma, allergy, neurodevelopment, and later chronic-disease susceptibility. In older adults, the accumulated exposome may contribute to biological aging, multimorbidity, frailty, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and premature mortality.

Social and Geographic Exposomes

The social exposome examines how poverty, discrimination, education, employment, housing, neighborhood conditions, violence, and health-care access become biologically embedded.

Residential segregation and neighborhood disinvestment can concentrate harmful exposures such as industrial pollution, traffic emissions, extreme heat, unsafe housing, and limited green space. These conditions may contribute to unequal burdens of asthma, cancer, diabetes, and other chronic diseases.

Other important social and geographic exposures include:

  • Housing instability and homelessness
  • Incarceration
  • Migration and displacement
  • Childhood adversity
  • Social isolation and loneliness
  • Food insecurity
  • Neighborhood deprivation
  • Rural health-care limitations
  • Unsafe or precarious employment

Environmental-justice research emphasizes that exposure is shaped by political and economic systems. Communities experiencing the greatest environmental burdens frequently have the fewest resources for avoiding hazards, obtaining medical care, or influencing environmental decisions.

Drinking Water, Food, and Consumer Products

Drinking water can expose communities to arsenic, nitrate, lead, PFAS, pesticides, disinfection by-products, and agricultural runoff. These contaminants are investigated in relation to cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness, kidney damage, and developmental effects.

Food can provide nutrients while also serving as an exposure pathway for mercury, cadmium, PFAS, microplastics, pesticide residues, packaging chemicals, and compounds produced during processing or high-temperature cooking.

Consumer products contribute additional exposures through:

  • Cosmetics and personal-care products
  • Fragrances and preservatives
  • Cleaning products and disinfectants
  • Plastic food containers
  • Furniture and building materials
  • Flame retardants
  • Household pesticides
  • Paints and solvents

Household dust can collect metals, allergens, microbes, pesticides, plasticizers, and flame retardants, creating continuing exposure through inhalation, ingestion, and skin contact.

Occupational and Industrial Exposomes

The occupational exposome encompasses chemical, physical, biological, ergonomic, organizational, and psychosocial conditions experienced throughout a working life.

Workers may encounter:

  • Diesel exhaust
  • Silica and asbestos
  • Welding fumes
  • Solvents
  • Formaldehyde
  • Pesticides
  • Metalworking fluids
  • Cleaning chemicals
  • Dust and biological contaminants
  • Heat, ultraviolet radiation, and noise
  • Shift work and disrupted sleep
  • Workplace stress and insecurity

Firefighters, agricultural workers, construction workers, miners, health-care workers, cleaners, hairdressers, nail-salon workers, textile workers, and industrial employees may experience distinctive mixtures of occupational exposures.

Occupational exposomics seeks to understand these mixtures rather than evaluating each hazard independently. It also considers work schedules, stress, protective equipment, housing, income, and access to occupational health services.

Climate, Air, and the Built Environment

Climate change acts as an exposome multiplier by changing heat, air pollution, pollen, infectious disease, food security, wildfire activity, migration, and access to health care.

Extreme heat places additional strain on people with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and respiratory illness. Urban heat islands often overlap with limited tree cover, dense development, pollution, poverty, and historic patterns of neighborhood disinvestment.

The built environment shapes chronic-disease risks through:

  • Road and airport proximity
  • Traffic pollution and noise
  • Housing quality
  • Building ventilation
  • Walkability
  • Public transportation
  • Access to parks and green space
  • Artificial light at night
  • Food and commercial environments
  • Availability of medical and social services

Green and blue spaces may support physical activity, social connection, cooling, stress reduction, and lower pollution. Their effects vary, however, because natural environments may also introduce pollen, flooding, contaminated water, or other exposure risks.

Infection, Immunity, and the Microbiome

Viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, antimicrobial treatments, and microbial environments form an infectious exposome. These exposures interact with genetics, nutrition, pollution, stress, and health-care conditions.

The microbiome is both a target and mediator of environmental exposure. Diet, antibiotics, chemicals, infections, and social conditions can alter microbial communities. Microbes can also transform foods, medicines, and pollutants into biologically active compounds.

Microbial and immune pathways are relevant to cancer, asthma, diabetes, allergies, and other inflammatory diseases. The gut-lung axis illustrates how intestinal microbes and their metabolites may influence respiratory immunity, while the gut microbiome may affect insulin resistance and colorectal-cancer development.

Prevention and Public-Health Applications

The goal of exposome research is not merely to catalogue hazards. It is to identify modifiable exposures and translate scientific findings into prevention.

Potential interventions include:

  • Reducing air and water pollution
  • Regulating hazardous chemicals and mixtures
  • Improving occupational protections
  • Providing healthy and stable housing
  • Expanding access to nutritious food
  • Designing walkable and climate-resilient communities
  • Reducing tobacco-smoke exposure
  • Improving ventilation
  • Addressing environmental racism and social inequality
  • Protecting people during sensitive life stages
  • Strengthening community exposure monitoring

Precision environmental health combines exposure information with genetic, biological, behavioral, and social data. This approach may help identify particularly vulnerable populations while informing broader policies that reduce exposure for entire communities.

Exposome data also raise ethical questions about privacy, workplace responsibility, location tracking, community consent, discrimination, and equitable access to resulting health benefits. Responsible exposome research must protect individuals while ensuring that affected communities participate in research and policy decisions.

Conclusion

The exposome provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how lifelong environmental conditions interact with biology to influence chronic disease. Cancer, diabetes, asthma, obesity, and related illnesses cannot be fully explained by genetics or individual behavior alone.

Chemical mixtures, air pollution, occupational hazards, diet, infections, climate, housing, stress, discrimination, and neighborhood conditions interact across the life course. Their effects can become biologically embedded through inflammation, oxidative stress, endocrine disruption, epigenetic change, immune dysfunction, altered metabolism, and microbiome disruption.

By identifying preventable exposures and the communities carrying the greatest burdens, exposome research can support more effective disease prevention, environmental regulation, occupational protection, clinical care, and environmental-justice policy.



Overview and Broad Exposome Research

A Large-Scale Look at the Exposome

| Harvard Medical School | Harvard Medical School | March 18, 2026 

Researchers are developing large-scale methods to measure how chemical, biological, behavioral, and social exposures collectively influence chronic diseases across the human lifespan.
Decoding the Exposome for Type 1 Diabetes Prevention

| Marion Rollet et al. | Diabetes & Metabolism | 2026 

This review examines infections, diet, pollutants, early-life conditions, and other exposome components that may initiate type 1 diabetes or offer opportunities for prevention.
Environmental Toxicant Exposure and Diabetes Risk

| Q. S. Yang et al. | Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety | 2026 

An exposome-wide analysis evaluates environmental toxicants, chemical mixtures, and molecular pathways associated with diabetes risk.
What Is the Exposome?

| International Human Exposome Network | IHEN | April 1, 2025 

This introduction defines the exposome as the combined physical, chemical, biological, and psychosocial influences that affect biology and health.
Exposome Research Comes of Age

| Carolyn Beans | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2025 

This overview describes advances that allow scientists to study lifetime combinations of pollution, diet, stress, behavior, and other environmental influences on disease.
The Exposome at Twenty: A Personal Account

| Christopher P. Wild | Exposome | 2025 

The scientist who introduced the exposome reflects on two decades of progress toward identifying environmental causes of cancer and other noncommunicable diseases.
Understanding the Exposome

| National Institutes of Health | NIH Research Matters | 2025 

NIH explains how researchers combine environmental measurements and biological responses to understand the cumulative origins of chronic disease.
Advancing Translational Exposomics

| Denis Sarigiannis et al. | Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology | 2025 

The authors discuss how exposomics, genomics, biomonitoring, and health data can be translated into disease prevention and precision public health.
Exposome and the Prevention of Lung Diseases

| Metin Akgün et al. | Eurasian Journal of Medicine | 2025 

This review applies the exposome framework to preventing respiratory diseases by addressing chemical, physical, biological, occupational, and social exposures.
Unravelling the Exposome of Severe Asthma Exacerbations

| Camille Tcherakian et al. | European Respiratory Journal | 2025 

French researchers investigate how interacting pollution, weather, allergens, infections, and social conditions influence severe asthma attacks.
External Exposome and Incident Asthma Across the Life Course

| Zhebin Yu et al. | The Lancet Regional Health – Europe | 2025 

Data from 14 European cohorts reveal how urban environmental conditions are associated with the development of asthma from childhood through adulthood.
Impact of the Exposome in Type 1 Diabetes

| Marion Rollet et al. | JMIR Research Protocols | 2025 

This review protocol maps research on how diet, infections, pollutants, and other environmental factors may influence type 1 diabetes and its complications.
Environmental and Infectious Agents as Drivers of Cancer

| Zodwa Dlamini et al. | International Journal of Molecular Sciences | 2025 

The article connects chemical, occupational, lifestyle, and infectious exposures with molecular changes that contribute to cancer initiation and progression.
Exposomes and Genes: The Duo Influencing Cancer

| Urooj Saqib et al. | Frontiers in Genetics | 2025 

This review explains how environmental exposures interact with genes, DNA repair, inflammation, and epigenetic regulation to influence cancer susceptibility.
Exposomics: A Review of Methodologies, Applications, and Future Directions

| Mengting Wan et al. | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health | 2025 

This review evaluates current exposome measurement methods, analytical challenges, disease applications, and priorities for translating exposomics into clinical and public-health practice.
Maternal Nutrition, Toxicants, and Epigenetic Programming of Chronic Disease

| Emmanuel U. Alum et al. | Frontiers in Nutrition | 2025 

The authors examine how maternal diet and environmental toxicants can epigenetically program offspring susceptibility to obesity, diabetes, respiratory illness, and other chronic diseases.
Exposome-Based Public Health Interventions

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2021–2025 

This research considers how exposome findings can guide interventions targeting pollution, diet, housing, occupation, behavior, and social inequality.
The Pregnancy Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

These studies investigate how environmental conditions during pregnancy influence fetal development and long-term risks of asthma, obesity, diabetes, and cancer.
The Aging Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Researchers examine how accumulated chemical, nutritional, occupational, behavioral, and social exposures contribute to biological aging and chronic disease.
The Exposome: From Concept to Public Health Utility

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2015–2025 

These articles explore how lifetime exposure data can be translated into regulation, prevention, clinical guidance, and environmental-justice policy.
The External and Internal Exposome in Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2017–2025 

The literature connects external pollutants and social conditions with internal processes such as oxidative stress, inflammation, metabolism, and microbiome disruption.
The Urban Exposome and Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Urban exposome studies analyze interacting effects of air pollution, noise, heat, green space, housing, traffic, and socioeconomic conditions.
The Rural Exposome and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

This research examines agricultural chemicals, dust, drinking-water contaminants, occupational exposures, health-care access, and rural chronic-disease disparities.
The Exposome and Health Across the Life Course

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

A life-course approach investigates how exposures accumulate, interact, and exert different effects during prenatal development, childhood, adulthood, and aging.
Questionnaire-Based Exposome-Wide Association Studies for Common Complex Diseases

| David Lloyd et al. | Scientific Reports | 2024 

Researchers analyze questionnaire-derived exposures in relation to 11 common diseases, demonstrating how lifestyle and environmental data can complement genetic studies.
Machine Learning-Based Environmental and Clinical Risk Prediction

| Jean-Baptiste Guimbaud et al. | Communications Medicine | 2024 

Machine learning is used to predict childhood cardiometabolic, respiratory, and mental-health outcomes from early-life external and internal exposome data.
Integrating the Exposome and One Health Approach

| Patricia Matus et al. | Frontiers in Public Health | 2024 

This article combines human, animal, and ecosystem health concepts to address environmental contributors to cancer, diabetes, asthma, and other noncommunicable diseases.
Environmental Exposures in Early Life and General Health in Childhood

| Imane Amine et al. | Environmental Health | 2023 

A HELIX study links prenatal and childhood environmental factors with a composite measure of cardiometabolic, respiratory, allergic, and mental health.
Beyond the Single-Outcome Approach

| Antonio Anguita-Ruiz et al. | Environment International | 2023 

The study compares methods for connecting a large early-life exposome with multiple obesity, cardiometabolic, respiratory, and mental-health outcomes.
Multi-Omics Signatures of the Human Early-Life Exposome

| Léa Maitre et al. | Nature Communications | 2022 

Researchers identify molecular signatures through which prenatal and childhood exposures may influence inflammation, metabolism, immunity, and later chronic-disease risk.
Exposomic Determinants of Immune-Mediated Diseases

| Janne E. Laiho et al. | Frontiers in Immunology | 2022 

The review describes how infections, diet, pollution, chemicals, microbiota, and lifestyle interact with immune regulation to produce chronic inflammatory disease.
Advancing Tools for Human Early-Life-Course Exposome Research

| Martine Vrijheid et al. | Environmental Epidemiology | 2021 

This review describes cohorts, biomarkers, sensors, and analytical tools for studying lifelong environmental influences on respiratory and cardiometabolic health.
Defining the Scope of Exposome Studies and Research Needs

| Peng Zhang et al. | Environmental Science & Technology Letters | 2021 

The authors compare top-down, bottom-up, and functional approaches for linking environmental exposure with biological effects and chronic disease.
Using Exposomics to Assess Cumulative Risks and Promote Health

| Martyn T. Smith et al. | Environmental Health Perspectives | 2015 

The authors argue that comprehensive exposure analysis can improve cumulative-risk assessment and reveal preventable causes of chronic disease.

Cancer, Carcinogens, and the Exposome

Environmental Exposures and the Hallmarks of Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2020–2025 

Researchers connect environmental agents with DNA damage, altered signaling, immune evasion, inflammation, epigenetic disruption, and other cancer-related processes.
The Breast Cancer Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2017–2025 

These studies investigate lifetime hormonal, chemical, occupational, dietary, behavioral, and social influences on breast-cancer susceptibility.
The Lung Cancer Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2017–2025 

Research examines tobacco, outdoor pollution, radon, asbestos, occupational chemicals, household smoke, and molecular responses associated with lung cancer.
The Colorectal Cancer Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Studies assess how diet, obesity, physical inactivity, alcohol, pollutants, medications, microbiota, and socioeconomic factors interact in colorectal cancer.
The Prostate Cancer Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Researchers investigate pesticides, metals, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, occupation, diet, inflammation, and social disparities in prostate-cancer risk.
The Liver Cancer Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

This research connects aflatoxins, alcohol, viral infections, metabolic disease, pollution, diet, and occupational agents with liver-cancer development.
The Pancreatic Cancer Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Studies examine smoking, obesity, diabetes, diet, pesticides, occupational chemicals, and chronic inflammation as components of pancreatic-cancer risk.
The Childhood Cancer Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Researchers evaluate prenatal and childhood exposure to pesticides, air pollution, radiation, solvents, tobacco smoke, infections, and social conditions.
Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals and Breast Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

The literature considers whether hormone-disrupting chemicals can influence mammary development, gene regulation, tumor initiation, and cancer progression.
Pesticide Exposure and Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Reviews associate certain occupational and residential pesticide exposures with leukemia, lymphoma, prostate cancer, and other malignancies.
PFAS Exposure and Cancer Risk

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2020–2025 

Research evaluates associations between PFAS exposure and kidney, testicular, thyroid, breast, liver, and other cancers.
Air Pollution and Breast Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Studies investigate whether particulate matter, traffic emissions, and nitrogen dioxide contribute to breast-cancer incidence or mortality.
Radon and Lung Cancer

| U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | EPA | 2025 

EPA explains how long-term residential radon exposure damages lung tissue and represents a major preventable cause of lung cancer.
Asbestos Exposure and Cancer

| National Cancer Institute | NCI | 2025 

This overview connects occupational and environmental asbestos exposure with mesothelioma, lung cancer, laryngeal cancer, and ovarian cancer.
Night-Shift Work, Circadian Disruption, and Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Research investigates how artificial light, sleep loss, and circadian disruption may alter hormones and influence breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers.
Wildfire Smoke and Cancer Risk

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2020–2025 

Scientists are studying whether repeated exposure to wildfire particles and carcinogenic combustion products contributes to long-term cancer risk.
Social Inequality and the Cancer Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Research examines how neighborhood pollution, hazardous work, food access, stress, health care, and structural discrimination shape unequal cancer burdens.
The Need for a Cancer Exposome Atlas

| Alicia S. Young et al. | Journal of the National Cancer Institute | 2024 

A scoping review argues for a cancer exposome atlas capable of connecting lifetime exposures, biomarkers, biological pathways, and cancer outcomes.
Understanding Exposomes and Their Relationship with Cancer Risk

| Rida Sharif et al. | Cancer Causes & Control | 2024 

The authors examine how pollution, diet, lifestyle, occupation, social conditions, and biological responses combine with genetics to shape cancer risk.
Exploring the Exposome Spectrum

| Laura Di Renzo et al. | International Journal of Molecular Sciences | 2024 

This review explores interactions among environmental chemicals, diet, food antigens, immunity, inflammation, and chronic disease.
Longitudinal Associations of an Exposome Score with Serum Metabolites

| Deirdre R. Healy et al. | Environmental Research | 2024 

Researchers connect a combined score for diet, sleep, exercise, smoking, and other exposures with metabolic biomarkers related to chronic disease.
Plastics-Associated Chemicals and Human Health

| Christina Symeonides et al. | Annals of Global Health | 2024 

An umbrella review associates plastic-related chemicals with metabolic, reproductive, respiratory, neurological, and cancer-related health outcomes.
Petrochemicals and the Environment: A Population Health Crisis

| Tracey J. Woodruff | New England Journal of Medicine | 2024 

The article links expanding petrochemical production and exposure to endocrine disruptors with cancers, diabetes, respiratory illness, and other chronic conditions.
Cancer and the Environment

| National Cancer Institute | NCI | 2024 

This resource reviews environmental and occupational substances known or suspected to increase cancer risk.
Cancer Prevention Through an Exposome Lens

| International Agency for Research on Cancer | IARC | 2024 

IARC describes research that integrates environmental, occupational, dietary, metabolic, and lifestyle exposures to identify preventable cancer causes.
Environmental Carcinogens and Cancer Risk

| American Cancer Society | American Cancer Society | 2024 

This overview explains how asbestos, radon, air pollution, pesticides, and industrial chemicals can become components of an individual’s cancer-related exposome.
Obesity, the Exposome, and Cancer

| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC | 2024 

The CDC describes how excess body weight—shaped by diet, activity, stress, neighborhood, and chemical exposures—is connected with multiple cancers.
Benzene Exposure and Leukemia

| National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health | CDC/NIOSH | 2024 

Benzene exposure from workplaces, fuel, tobacco smoke, and industrial emissions can damage bone marrow and increase leukemia risk.
Occupational Exposures and Cancer

| National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health | CDC/NIOSH | 2024 

Workplace exposure to asbestos, diesel exhaust, silica, solvents, metals, radiation, and other agents contributes to preventable occupational cancers.
Exposome Epidemiology for Suspect Environmental Chemical Risk Factors in Breast Cancer

| Young-Mi Go et al. | Environment International | 2023 

Researchers combine chemical screening and biological pathway analysis to identify environmental chemicals that may contribute to breast cancer.
Environmental Exposures and Breast Cancer

| National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences | NIEHS | 2023 

NIEHS summarizes evidence concerning endocrine-disrupting chemicals, air pollution, occupational agents, and other environmental influences on breast cancer.
Arsenic Exposure and Cancer

| World Health Organization | WHO | 2022 

Long-term exposure to arsenic-contaminated water is associated with cancers of the skin, bladder, and lung as well as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Measuring the Exposome: A Powerful Basis for Evaluating Environmental Exposures and Cancer Risk

| Kelly P. K. Olympio et al. | Revista de Saúde Pública | 2019 

This review describes biomonitoring and omics tools that can connect environmental contaminants with cancer-related biological processes.
Roadmap for Investigating Epigenome Deregulation and Environmental Origins of Cancer

| Zdenko Herceg et al. | International Journal of Cancer | 2018 

Researchers describe how environmental exposures can alter epigenetic regulation and contribute to cancer development across the life course.
Applying an Exposome-Wide Approach to Cancer Services

| Paul D. Juarez et al. | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health | 2018 

An exposome-wide model is proposed for studying how chemical and nonchemical exposures affect cancer occurrence, care, survival, and disparities.
The Exposome Paradigm in Human Health

| Christopher P. Wild | International Journal of Epidemiology | 2017 

This commentary explains why measuring environmental exposures systematically is essential for discovering preventable causes of cancer and chronic disease.
The Exposome: A Primer

| Gary W. Miller and Dean P. Jones | Toxicological Sciences | 2014 

The article introduces the exposome as a framework for studying cumulative external exposures and the internal biochemical changes they produce.
Air Pollution and Cancer

| International Agency for Research on Cancer | IARC | 2013 

IARC classifies outdoor air pollution and particulate matter as carcinogenic, demonstrating how a major exposome component contributes to lung cancer.
The Exposome: From Concept to Utility

| Christopher P. Wild | International Journal of Epidemiology | 2012 

Wild outlines practical ways to apply the exposome to cancer epidemiology, emphasizing repeated measurements during critical life stages.
Environmental Exposure Assessment in Cancer Research

| Christopher P. Wild | Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention | 2005 

This foundational paper introduces the exposome as a complement to the genome for identifying environmental causes of cancer.

Diabetes, Obesity, and Cardiometabolic Exposures

The Early-Life Exposome and Childhood Cardiometabolic Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

This collection covers European studies connecting prenatal and childhood environmental exposures with blood pressure, body composition, lipids, and glucose regulation.
Air Pollution and Type 2 Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2020–2025 

These studies examine particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, traffic pollution, inflammation, and oxidative stress as environmental contributors to type 2 diabetes.
Persistent Organic Pollutants and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Research associates persistent organic pollutants with altered glucose metabolism, insulin resistance, and increased diabetes risk.
PFAS Exposure and Metabolic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

This literature examines whether long-lasting PFAS chemicals influence lipid metabolism, insulin function, obesity, and diabetes.
Phthalates, Bisphenols, and Type 2 Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Studies investigate how common plastic-associated endocrine disruptors may alter glucose regulation and increase metabolic disease susceptibility.
Built Environment and Diabetes Risk

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Research connects walkability, food access, traffic, neighborhood deprivation, green space, and physical activity opportunities with diabetes risk.
The Gut Microbiome, Environmental Exposures, and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

These articles explore how diet, medicines, chemicals, and other exposures reshape intestinal microbes and influence metabolic inflammation.
Sleep, Circadian Disruption, and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2020–2025 

The research treats sleep duration, artificial light, shift work, and circadian disruption as exposome factors affecting glucose metabolism.
Noise Exposure and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Studies associate chronic transportation noise with stress responses, sleep disruption, metabolic dysfunction, and type 2 diabetes.
Early-Life Exposure to Bisphenol A and Childhood Cardiometabolic Traits

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Studies assess whether prenatal and childhood bisphenol exposure affects body composition, blood pressure, insulin regulation, and lipid metabolism.
Air Pollution and Gestational Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

The literature examines whether particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, and traffic emissions increase gestational-diabetes risk through inflammation and oxidative stress.
The Gestational Diabetes Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Researchers study combined chemical, nutritional, behavioral, social, and built-environment factors that influence glucose regulation during pregnancy.
Metals and Type 2 Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Reviews evaluate arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, and essential-metal imbalances as possible environmental contributors to diabetes.
Pesticides and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Occupational, residential, and dietary pesticide exposures are investigated for potential effects on insulin sensitivity and pancreatic beta-cell function.
Organophosphate Pesticides and Metabolic Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

These studies examine how organophosphate exposure may influence oxidative stress, endocrine signaling, obesity, and glucose metabolism.
Persistent Organic Pollutant Mixtures and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Mixture studies assess the combined metabolic effects of PCBs, dioxins, and organochlorine pesticides that accumulate in human tissues.
Flame Retardants and Metabolic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Research investigates whether flame-retardant chemicals disrupt thyroid, reproductive, and metabolic hormones associated with obesity and diabetes.
Microplastics and Metabolic Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2020–2025 

Emerging studies examine inflammation, oxidative stress, microbiome disruption, and endocrine effects associated with microplastic exposure.
Food Additives and Metabolic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

The literature evaluates emulsifiers, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and other additives as possible influences on the microbiome and glucose regulation.
Ultra-Processed Foods and Type 2 Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Prospective studies associate high consumption of ultra-processed foods with obesity, metabolic dysfunction, and increased type 2 diabetes risk.
Food Insecurity and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Food insecurity can promote unstable diets, chronic stress, medication tradeoffs, and poor diabetes prevention and management.
Neighborhood Deprivation and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Research connects neighborhood disadvantage with pollution, limited healthy-food access, reduced physical activity, stress, and higher diabetes risk.
Green Space and Type 2 Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Studies explore whether greener neighborhoods reduce diabetes risk through physical activity, lower pollution, cooler temperatures, and psychological restoration.
Heat Exposure and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Extreme heat can affect hydration, cardiovascular strain, glucose regulation, medication safety, and mortality among people with diabetes.
Shift Work and Type 2 Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Meta-analyses associate irregular and nighttime work schedules with circadian disruption, poor sleep, obesity, insulin resistance, and diabetes.
Occupational Chemicals and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Research evaluates whether workplace exposure to pesticides, solvents, metals, and combustion products contributes to metabolic disease.
Maternal Smoking and Childhood Metabolic Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Prenatal tobacco exposure is associated with altered fetal growth, childhood obesity, insulin resistance, and later cardiometabolic risk.
Environmental Obesogens

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

The obesogen hypothesis proposes that some chemicals alter fat-cell development, appetite regulation, endocrine signaling, and energy metabolism.
Environmental Chemicals and Diabetes and Obesity

| National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences | NIEHS | 2024 

NIEHS reviews research on endocrine disruptors, metals, air pollution, and other environmental factors associated with obesity and diabetes.
Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals and Diabetes

| Endocrine Society | Endocrine Society | 2024 

The resource explains how chemicals that interfere with hormonal signaling may contribute to insulin resistance, obesity, and diabetes.
Food Environments and Metabolic Health

| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC | 2024 

The CDC describes how food access and dietary patterns form part of the external exposome influencing obesity, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.
Cardiometabolic Risk Estimation Using Exposome Data and Machine Learning

| Alejandro Atehortúa et al. | Journal of Biomedical Informatics | 2023 

Researchers use exposome and machine-learning data to estimate cardiovascular and type 2 diabetes risk while examining fairness across population groups.
Arsenic Exposure and Diabetes

| National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences | NIEHS | 2023 

Research summarized by NIEHS examines how chronic arsenic exposure may disrupt pancreatic function and glucose metabolism.
Environmental Risk Factors of Type 2 Diabetes: An Exposome Approach

| Joline W. J. Beulens et al. | Diabetologia | 2022 

This review connects air pollution, noise, socioeconomic circumstances, built environments, lifestyle, and internal biomarkers with type 2 diabetes.
Questionnaire-Based Polyexposure Assessment and Type 2 Diabetes

| Fatemeh S. Akhtari et al. | Frontiers in Public Health | 2022 

A polyexposure questionnaire assesses multiple environmental and behavioral risk factors that may predict type 2 diabetes beyond genetic risk scores.
Exposome-Wide Association Study for Metabolic Syndrome

| Peng Gao et al. | Frontiers in Genetics | 2021 

This exposome-wide study evaluates numerous chemical, dietary, behavioral, and socioeconomic factors associated with metabolic syndrome.
Exposomes and Metabolic Health Through a Physical-Activity Lens

| Rebecca J. W. Hiam et al. | Journal of Endocrinology | 2021 

The review explains how climate, pollution, neighborhood conditions, occupation, and other exposures can modify the metabolic benefits of physical activity.
Social Determinants of Diabetes

| Felicia Hill-Briggs et al. | Diabetes Care | 2021 

This scientific review links income, housing, food insecurity, health care, discrimination, and neighborhood conditions with diabetes risk and outcomes.
Prenatal and Postnatal PFAS Exposure and Cardiometabolic Health

| Eleni Papadopoulou et al. | Environment International | 2021 

HELIX researchers associate prenatal PFAS exposure with childhood lipid patterns and adiposity, suggesting pregnancy may be a sensitive exposure period.
Metabolic Signatures of the Exposome

| Matej Orešič et al. | Cell Metabolism | 2020 

The authors show how metabolomics can identify biochemical signatures of chemical, dietary, and lifestyle exposures related to diabetes and metabolic disease.
Early-Life Exposome and Childhood Obesity

| Chung-Ho Lau et al. | Environmental Health Perspectives | 2020 

A European exposome study identifies prenatal and childhood exposures associated with obesity and related metabolic measurements in children.
Early-Life Exposome and Childhood Obesity: A Multi-Cohort Study

| Chung-Ho Lau et al. | Environmental Health Perspectives | 2020 

The HELIX project investigates how tobacco smoke, pollutants, diet, green space, socioeconomic factors, and other exposures combine to influence childhood obesity.

Asthma, Allergy, and Respiratory Exposures

An Exposome Approach to Asthma Across the Life Course

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2017–2025 

These studies investigate how prenatal conditions, allergens, pollution, infections, occupations, diet, and social circumstances influence asthma at different ages.
Early-Life Exposures and Childhood Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

These studies examine how prenatal smoking, air pollution, chemicals, diet, microbes, allergens, and social stress influence childhood asthma.
Prenatal Exposome and Childhood Respiratory Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Research suggests that exposures during pregnancy can affect fetal lung development and later susceptibility to asthma and reduced lung function.
Chemical Mixtures and Childhood Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

These articles assess combined exposure to phthalates, phenols, PFAS, pesticides, and other chemicals rather than studying each pollutant independently.

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Evidence connects traffic-related particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and black carbon with asthma development, exacerbations, and impaired lung growth.
Green Space, Pollen, and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Research shows that natural environments can reduce pollution and stress while also exposing susceptible people to pollen and other allergens.
Microbiome Exposures and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Studies explore how farm environments, household microbes, antibiotics, diet, and pollutants shape immune development and asthma risk.
Dietary Exposures and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Research evaluates dietary patterns, obesity, antioxidants, fatty acids, food processing, and the microbiome as components of the asthma exposome.
Stress, Violence, and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Chronic stress and exposure to violence may influence asthma through immune, hormonal, behavioral, and environmental pathways.
Prenatal Air Pollution and Childhood Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Studies investigate whether maternal exposure to particulate matter and traffic pollution affects fetal lung and immune development.
Prenatal Tobacco Smoke and Childhood Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Evidence associates prenatal and early-life tobacco smoke exposure with wheezing, impaired lung development, and childhood asthma.
Electronic Cigarette Exposure and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Research examines respiratory irritation, inflammation, asthma symptoms, and secondhand aerosol exposure associated with electronic cigarettes.
Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Studies investigate nitrogen dioxide and other combustion pollutants released by gas cooking as potentially modifiable asthma exposures.
Pesticide Exposure and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Occupational and residential pesticide exposures are studied for their potential to cause airway irritation, sensitization, inflammation, and asthma.
Phthalate Exposure and Childhood Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Research evaluates prenatal and childhood exposure to plasticizers in relation to wheezing, allergy, airway inflammation, and asthma.
PFAS Exposure and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Studies examine whether PFAS-related immune disruption influences childhood asthma, allergies, infections, and vaccine responses.
Cleaning Products and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Frequent exposure to sprays, disinfectants, fragrances, and cleaning chemicals is associated with occupational and household asthma risks.
Agricultural Exposures and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Farming can expose workers and families to dust, animals, microbes, pesticides, molds, and gases that may protect against or contribute to respiratory disease.
Thunderstorm Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Thunderstorms can rupture pollen grains and concentrate respirable allergen particles, producing sudden community outbreaks of severe asthma.
Ozone Exposure and Asthma

| U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | EPA | 2025 

Ground-level ozone irritates airways, reduces lung function, worsens asthma, and increases vulnerability during exercise and hot weather.
Traffic Noise and Respiratory Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Studies evaluate whether noise-related stress and sleep disruption interact with traffic pollution to influence asthma and respiratory symptoms.
Heat, Humidity, and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Temperature and humidity can alter ozone, pollen, mold, indoor-air quality, and physiological stress experienced by people with asthma.
Antibiotics, the Microbiome, and Childhood Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Research examines whether early antibiotic exposure changes microbial development in ways associated with allergy and asthma.
Farm Microbial Exposures and Asthma Protection

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Some farm-associated microbial exposures appear to train immune development and reduce allergic asthma, although agricultural hazards can also damage lungs.
Respiratory Infections and Asthma Development

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Early viral infections may interact with genetics, immune development, pollution, allergens, and socioeconomic conditions to influence persistent asthma.
School Environmental Exposures and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

School moisture, mold, pests, cleaning agents, ventilation, traffic pollution, and allergens can affect asthma symptoms and attendance.
Asthma Disparities and Structural Racism

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Research links segregation and structural racism with unequal housing, pollution, health-care access, stress, and asthma outcomes.

| Claudia S. Alcala et al. | Frontiers in Public Health | 2024 

This review examines how childhood environmental exposures may jointly influence asthma, brain development, and executive functioning.
The Urban Exposome and Childhood Asthma

| Johns Hopkins Exposome Collaborative | Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health | 2024 

This project combines environmental monitoring and biological measurements to study environmental contributions to childhood asthma development and severity.
Air Pollution and Asthma

| U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | EPA | 2024 

EPA summarizes how particulate pollution can initiate respiratory symptoms and worsen asthma, especially among children and susceptible populations.
Climate Change and Asthma

| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC | 2024 

The CDC describes how heat, ozone, wildfire smoke, longer pollen seasons, and extreme weather can intensify asthma-related exposures.
Wildfire Smoke and Respiratory Health

| U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | EPA | 2024 

Wildfire smoke contains complex mixtures of particles and gases that can exacerbate asthma and contribute to chronic respiratory harm.
Indoor Environmental Exposures and Asthma

| U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | EPA | 2024 

This guide identifies mold, tobacco smoke, pests, dust mites, combustion pollutants, and chemicals as modifiable components of the asthma exposome.
Occupational Asthma

| National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health | CDC/NIOSH | 2024 

Workplace dusts, fumes, cleaning agents, allergens, and sensitizing chemicals can cause new asthma or aggravate existing disease.
Housing Conditions and Asthma Disparities

| U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development | HUD | 2024 

Poor housing conditions can concentrate moisture, mold, pests, smoke, and combustion pollutants, producing unequal asthma risks.
Environmental Justice and Asthma

| American Lung Association | American Lung Association | 2024 

The article explains why low-income communities and communities of color often face higher exposure to pollution and a greater burden of asthma.
Mold and Dampness in Asthma

| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC | 2024 

Damp buildings and mold can trigger respiratory symptoms, allergic reactions, and asthma attacks among susceptible occupants.
The Exposome in Respiratory Diseases

| Mathilde Savouré et al. | Breathe | 2023 

The article reviews preventable environmental contributors to asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and other respiratory conditions.
The Exposome Concept: How Has It Changed Respiratory Research?

| Audrey Guillien et al. | Breathe | 2023 

Researchers explain how combined exposure assessment can improve understanding of complex, multifactorial respiratory diseases.
Lung Health and the Exposome

| S. B. Khatri et al. | Springer | 2022 

This multidisciplinary volume examines air pollution, allergens, occupational agents, climate, infections, and other exposures affecting asthma and lung disease.
Profile of Exposures and Lung Function in Adults with Asthma

| Audrey Guillien et al. | Environmental Research | 2021 

The study identifies a combined lifestyle and environmental exposure profile associated with substantially reduced lung function in adults with asthma.
The Exposome Approach to Multiple Environmental Factors and Asthma

| Audrey Guillien et al. | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health | 2021 

This review explains how exposome-wide methods can identify combinations of lifestyle, occupational, chemical, and environmental factors associated with asthma.

Exposome Methods, Mechanisms, and Measurement

What Is the Exposome? How Our Environment Shapes Our Health

| HERCULES Exposome Research Center | Emory University | 2025 

This public-facing explanation shows how the air people breathe, foods they eat, places they live, and chemicals they encounter can affect long-term health.
Untargeted Metabolomics and the Chemical Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

These studies use high-resolution mass spectrometry to detect environmental chemicals and disease-related metabolic changes without limiting analysis to predetermined compounds.
Wearable Sensors for Exposome Research

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Wearable devices can record personal pollution, temperature, noise, location, activity, sleep, and physiological responses across daily life.
Spatial Exposomics and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Spatial exposomics integrates maps of pollution, climate, green space, deprivation, and health services with individual disease data.
Epigenetics, the Exposome, and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

The literature examines how nutrition, pollutants, stress, smoking, and other exposures can change gene regulation without altering DNA sequences.
Inflammation as a Biological Pathway of the Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Many exposures converge on chronic inflammation, helping connect the exposome with cancer, insulin resistance, asthma, and cardiovascular disease.
Oxidative Stress and the Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

These studies identify oxidative stress as a common mechanism through which pollution, radiation, smoking, and chemicals damage cells and tissues.
Social Exposome and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Social exposome research examines how poverty, discrimination, work, housing, education, stress, and neighborhood conditions become biologically embedded.
The Human Exposome Project

| International Human Exposome Network | IHEN | 2025 

This international initiative coordinates exposome methods, tools, data standards, and research intended to prevent environmentally influenced diseases.
Environmental Exposures, Biological Aging, and Mortality

| Austin Argentieri et al. | Nature Medicine | 2025 

UK Biobank research compares numerous environmental exposures with genetic risk and identifies modifiable influences on biological aging, disease, and premature mortality.
High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry and the Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

High-resolution mass spectrometry can screen biological samples for thousands of known and unknown chemicals and their metabolic products.
Adductomics and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Adductomics measures chemical modifications of DNA and proteins that preserve evidence of reactive exposures and oxidative damage.
Lipidomics in Exposome Research

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Lipidomics helps identify exposure-related disruptions in fats involved in inflammation, insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.
Proteomics and the Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Proteomic studies measure exposure-associated changes in proteins that regulate immunity, metabolism, tissue repair, and disease progression.
Transcriptomics and Environmental Exposure

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Transcriptomics reveals how pollution, chemicals, diet, stress, and other exposures alter gene activity across cells and tissues.
DNA Methylation as an Exposome Biomarker

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

DNA-methylation patterns can record biological responses to smoking, pollution, nutrition, toxic metals, stress, and aging.
The Epigenetic Clock and Environmental Exposures

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Studies use epigenetic aging measures to test whether pollution, smoking, adversity, diet, and occupation accelerate biological aging.
Mitochondria as Targets of the Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Environmental exposures can disrupt mitochondrial energy production, oxidative balance, signaling, and cell survival in chronic disease.
Immune Signatures of the Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Researchers use immune-cell profiles and inflammatory biomarkers to identify how environmental conditions influence asthma, cancer, diabetes, and autoimmunity.
The Blood Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Blood-based exposomics measures environmental chemicals, metabolites, proteins, antibodies, inflammatory signals, and molecular damage.
The Breath Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Breath analysis can detect volatile compounds associated with environmental exposures, airway inflammation, asthma, metabolic disease, and cancer.
The Microbiome as Part of the Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

The microbiome both responds to environmental exposures and transforms chemicals, foods, and medications into biologically active compounds.
Non-Targeted Analysis of Environmental Chemicals

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Non-targeted analysis expands biomonitoring beyond a short list of familiar pollutants and can identify previously unrecognized exposures.
Exposome-Wide Association Study Methods

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Exposome-wide association studies systematically test numerous exposures while addressing correlation, multiple comparisons, mixtures, and replication.
Bayesian Methods for Environmental Mixtures

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Bayesian models estimate health effects of correlated exposure mixtures and help identify influential chemicals or exposure groups.
Machine Learning in Exposome Research

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Machine-learning methods can detect nonlinear relationships and interactions across large environmental, biological, and clinical datasets.
Causal Inference in Exposome Studies

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Causal-inference methods help researchers distinguish plausible environmental causes from correlations produced by confounding, selection, or reverse causation.
Citizen Science and Personal Exposure Monitoring

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2025 

Community monitoring projects can measure neighborhood pollution, reveal exposure disparities, and involve residents in environmental-health research.
Ethics, Privacy, and Equity in Exposome Research

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2019–2025 

Exposome research raises questions about sensitive location data, workplace responsibility, discrimination, community consent, and equitable access to resulting health benefits.
Exposure Biology and the Exposome

| National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences | NIEHS | 2024 

NIEHS describes technologies for measuring external exposures and the metabolic, genomic, immune, and microbiome responses they produce.
The Exposome Collaborative

| Johns Hopkins University | Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health | 2024 

Johns Hopkins describes the exposome as the cumulative imprint of environmental, dietary, behavioral, occupational, and internal biological influences.
Environmental Mixtures and Human Health

| National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences | NIEHS | 2024 

NIEHS supports methods for evaluating real-world chemical mixtures and combined stressors rather than relying exclusively on single-exposure studies.
Environmental Burden of Disease

| World Health Organization | WHO | 2024 

WHO assesses how modifiable environmental conditions contribute to cancers, respiratory diseases, diabetes-related risks, cardiovascular disease, and premature death.
Global Burden of Disease from Environmental Risks

| Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation | IHME | 2024 

Global burden estimates demonstrate the extensive contribution of air pollution and other environmental risks to chronic illness and mortality.
Precision Environmental Health and the Exposome

| National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences | NIEHS | 2024 

Precision environmental health combines exposure, genetic, biological, behavioral, and social information to identify individual and population disease risks.
The Exposome: A New Frontier in Disease Research

| Metabolon | Metabolon | 2023 

The article explains how metabolomics can reveal biochemical responses to environmental, dietary, behavioral, and internal exposures.
Climate Change as an Exposome Multiplier

| World Health Organization | WHO | 2023 

Climate change magnifies heat, air pollution, allergens, infectious agents, food insecurity, displacement, and stress that contribute to chronic disease.
Exposome and Exposomics

| National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health | CDC/NIOSH | 2022 

This overview explains how external monitoring, biomarkers, and omics can uncover links between lifetime occupational or environmental exposures and disease.
The Exposome and Health: Where Chemistry Meets Biology

| Roel Vermeulen et al. | Science | 2020 

This influential review explains how chemistry, sensors, omics, epidemiology, and data science can reveal environmental causes of chronic disease.
Human Early-Life Exposome Study

| Léa Maitre et al. | BMJ Open | 2018 

The HELIX cohort combines numerous prenatal and childhood exposures with molecular profiles and outcomes including asthma, obesity, allergy, and neurodevelopment.
Determinants of the Urinary and Serum Metabolome in Children

| Chung-Ho E. Lau et al. | Metabolomics | 2018 

HELIX researchers identify dietary, demographic, lifestyle, and environmental factors that shape children’s serum and urinary metabolic profiles.
Biomonitoring in the Era of the Exposome

| Krista K. Dennis et al. | Environmental Health Perspectives | 2017 

Researchers describe biomonitoring strategies for measuring complex mixtures of environmental chemicals and their biological effects.
Use of the Exposome in Epidemiology

| D. Gayle DeBord et al. | American Journal of Epidemiology | 2016 

The authors assess how exposome concepts can be incorporated into epidemiological studies of occupational, environmental, and chronic disease risks.
A Systematic Comparison of Exposome Statistical Methods

| Lydiane Agier et al. | Environmental Health Perspectives | 2016 

This paper compares statistical techniques for identifying health effects when many correlated environmental exposures are analyzed simultaneously.
Development of Exposome Correlation Globes

| Chirag J. Patel and John P. Ioannidis | Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing | 2015 

Exposome correlation globes visualize relationships among exposures and help interpret exposome-wide studies of diabetes and mortality.
Biomarkers Intersect with the Exposome

| Stephen M. Rappaport et al. | Biomarkers in Medicine | 2012 

The article describes how omics technologies can discover biomarkers connecting environmental exposures with disease mechanisms.
Characterizing Exposomes: Tools for Measuring Personal Environmental Exposures

| Kellyn S. Betts | Environmental Health Perspectives | 2012 

This article reviews personal sensors and other tools designed to measure pollution, activity, diet, and location-based exposures.

Lifespan, Social, and Geographic Exposomes

Environmental Justice and the Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Research examines how pollution, climate hazards, unsafe work, housing, stress, and limited resources combine in historically marginalized communities.
Racial Residential Segregation and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Studies connect residential segregation with concentrated pollution, neighborhood deprivation, heat, reduced green space, asthma, diabetes, and cancer disparities.
The Neighborhood Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

The neighborhood exposome incorporates physical conditions, social relationships, commercial environments, infrastructure, pollution, safety, and public services.
Cumulative Environmental Burden and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

These studies assess how several environmental hazards and social vulnerabilities collectively affect disease risk.
Area Deprivation and Multimorbidity

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

People in deprived areas often develop multiple chronic diseases earlier, reflecting accumulated social, behavioral, occupational, and environmental risks.
Housing Instability and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Housing instability can increase stress and exposure to pollution, unsafe temperatures, mold, pests, crowding, and disruptions in medical care.
Homelessness and Environmental Exposure

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Research documents heightened exposure to extreme weather, air pollution, violence, infection, poor nutrition, and barriers to chronic-disease management.
Incarceration as a Health Exposure

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Incarceration exposes people to crowding, stress, poor ventilation, infectious disease, inadequate nutrition, and disruptions in long-term medical care.
Migration, Displacement, and the Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Migration and forced displacement can alter climate, occupational, nutritional, infectious, psychosocial, and health-care exposures across the life course.
Childhood Adversity and Adult Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Adverse childhood experiences can become biologically embedded through chronic stress, inflammation, altered behavior, and unequal environmental conditions.
Loneliness, Social Isolation, and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Social isolation and loneliness are associated with stress responses, inflammation, unhealthy behaviors, cardiovascular disease, diabetes complications, and premature mortality.
Exposome-Wide Ranking to Uncover Environmental Influences on Health

| Eric Ding et al. | Environmental Health Perspectives | 2024 

Researchers rank multiple environmental exposures according to their associations with health, helping prioritize mixtures and factors for further investigation.
Exposome and Unhealthy Aging

| Tamás Pandics et al. | Geroscience | 2023 

This review connects pollution, diet, occupation, psychosocial stress, physical activity, and other lifetime exposures with biological aging and chronic disease.
Climate Change, Allergic Disease, and One Health

| Ruby Pawankar et al. | World Allergy Organization Journal | 2023 

Climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, and ecological disruption are examined as interconnected drivers of asthma and allergic disease.
Exposome and Social Vulnerability

| Séverine Deguen et al. | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health | 2022 

The authors examine how social disadvantage can increase harmful exposures, reduce protective resources, and produce unequal chronic-disease burdens.
Long-Term Low-Level Air Pollution and Mortality

| Maciej Strak et al. | BMJ | 2021 

A large European cohort study finds increased mortality associated with particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, and black carbon even at comparatively low levels.
Mental Stress and Environmental Toxins in Chronic Disease

| Huan Li et al. | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health | 2020 

The article explains how pollution and psychosocial stress can converge on oxidative stress and inflammation to promote chronic noncommunicable diseases.
The Exposome Concept and Environmental Cardiovascular Risk

| Andreas Daiber et al. | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health | 2019 

This review connects air pollution, traffic noise, mental stress, and other environmental factors with cardiovascular and metabolic disease mechanisms.
Prenatal and Childhood Traffic Pollution and Telomere Length

| Diana Clemente et al. | Environmental Health Perspectives | 2019 

Early-life traffic-related air pollution is evaluated in relation to leukocyte telomere length, a marker associated with cellular aging and chronic disease.
The Exposome Concept as a Challenge for Environmental Epidemiology

| Valérie Siroux et al. | European Respiratory Review | 2016 

This review discusses scientific and methodological changes required to study complex lifetime exposures and respiratory disease.

Drinking Water, Food, and Consumer Chemical Exposures

Drinking-Water Contaminants and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Drinking water can contribute arsenic, nitrate, lead, PFAS, disinfection by-products, pesticides, and other components of the chemical exposome.
Nitrate in Drinking Water and Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Research evaluates whether long-term nitrate exposure contributes to endogenous formation of carcinogenic compounds and increased cancer risk.
Drinking-Water Disinfection By-Products and Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Studies investigate associations between trihalomethanes, haloacetic acids, and cancers of the bladder, colorectum, and other organs.
PFAS-Contaminated Drinking Water and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Communities with contaminated water provide evidence concerning PFAS exposure and immune, metabolic, thyroid, reproductive, and cancer outcomes.
Arsenic and Diabetes Risk

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Epidemiological and mechanistic research links chronic inorganic arsenic exposure with insulin resistance, impaired beta-cell function, and diabetes.
Arsenic and Respiratory Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Long-term arsenic exposure is investigated in relation to reduced lung function, chronic respiratory symptoms, bronchiectasis, and lung cancer.
Fluoride Exposure and Metabolic Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Research examines whether high fluoride exposure influences thyroid function, kidney health, glucose metabolism, and other biological pathways.
Agricultural Runoff and Human Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Agricultural runoff can introduce nitrate, pesticides, pathogens, veterinary drugs, and harmful algal nutrients into drinking-water sources.
Harmful Algal Blooms and Chronic Health Effects

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Algal toxins may be inhaled, ingested, or encountered through recreation and are studied for respiratory, liver, neurological, and carcinogenic effects.
Seafood Contaminants and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Seafood can provide beneficial nutrients while also carrying methylmercury, PFAS, microplastics, algal toxins, and persistent pollutants.
Dietary Cadmium and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Cadmium in tobacco and foods is associated with kidney damage, bone disease, cardiovascular outcomes, diabetes, and certain cancers.
Processed Meat, Cancer, and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Studies connect processed-meat consumption with colorectal cancer, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and exposure to nitrites and heat-produced compounds.
Dietary Acrylamide and Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Acrylamide formed in high-temperature cooking is examined as part of the dietary chemical exposome and a possible cancer risk.
Advanced Glycation End Products and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Dietary and internally produced advanced glycation end products may promote oxidative stress, inflammation, vascular injury, and diabetes complications.
Artificial Sweeteners and Metabolic Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Research examines whether artificial sweeteners influence appetite, glucose responses, gut microbes, body weight, and diabetes risk.
Pesticide Residues in Food and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Studies seek to quantify chronic dietary exposure to pesticide mixtures and their possible endocrine, metabolic, respiratory, and carcinogenic effects.
Food-Packaging Chemicals and Human Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Packaging can transfer bisphenols, phthalates, PFAS, mineral oils, and other chemicals into food and the internal exposome.
Personal-Care Products and the Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Cosmetics and personal-care products contribute exposure to fragrances, preservatives, phthalates, phenols, ultraviolet filters, and other biologically active chemicals.
Household Dust as an Exposure Pathway

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Household dust carries metals, flame retardants, plasticizers, pesticides, allergens, microbes, and other substances that can be inhaled or ingested.
Lead in Drinking Water and Long-Term Health

| U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | EPA | 2025 

Lead can enter water through plumbing and contribute to neurological, cardiovascular, kidney, reproductive, and developmental harm.

Occupational and Industrial Exposomes

The Occupational Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Occupational exposomics integrates chemical, physical, biological, ergonomic, organizational, and psychosocial conditions experienced throughout working life.
Diesel Exhaust and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Diesel exhaust contains particles and carcinogenic chemicals associated with lung cancer, airway inflammation, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic dysfunction.
Welding Fumes and Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Welding fumes contain metals and fine particles associated with lung cancer, respiratory symptoms, inflammation, and neurological effects.
Metalworking Fluids and Respiratory Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Aerosols from metalworking fluids can contain oils, additives, microbes, and contaminants that cause occupational asthma and hypersensitivity pneumonitis.
Solvent Exposure and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Workplace solvents are investigated for neurological, reproductive, liver, kidney, respiratory, metabolic, and carcinogenic effects.
Hairdressers’ Occupational Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Hairdressers encounter dyes, bleaches, persulfates, fragrances, formaldehyde-releasing treatments, aerosols, and wet-work conditions.
Nail-Salon Worker Exposures

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Nail workers may experience chronic exposure to volatile organic compounds, acrylates, plasticizers, dust, and poor ventilation.
Firefighter Exposome and Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Firefighters encounter combustion products, diesel exhaust, PFAS-containing equipment, flame retardants, stress, heat, and disrupted sleep.
Health-Care Worker Exposures and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Health-care workers can develop or aggravate asthma through repeated exposure to disinfectants, sterilants, cleaning products, gloves, and aerosolized medications.
Agricultural Worker Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Agricultural workers face pesticide mixtures, dust, heat, ultraviolet radiation, animal microbes, diesel exhaust, injuries, and social vulnerability.
Construction Worker Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Construction work can combine silica, asbestos, diesel exhaust, welding fumes, solvents, noise, heat, vibration, and physical strain.
Textile Worker Exposures and Respiratory Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Textile workers may inhale cotton dust, dyes, formaldehyde, fibers, microbes, and other agents associated with asthma and chronic airway disease.
Cleaning Worker Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Professional cleaners experience repeated mixtures of disinfectants, bleach, sprays, fragrances, dust, biological contaminants, and ergonomic stress.
Shift Work, Cancer, and Metabolic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Shift work combines circadian disruption, artificial light, sleep loss, stress, altered eating patterns, and occupational exposures.
Workplace Stress and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Job strain, insecurity, long hours, low control, harassment, and effort-reward imbalance are associated with metabolic and cardiovascular harm.
Occupational Heat Exposure and Chronic Kidney Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Recurrent heat stress and dehydration are implicated in chronic kidney disease among agricultural, construction, and other outdoor workers.
Workplace Air Pollution and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Research examines whether long-term exposure to workplace particles, combustion emissions, and chemicals contributes to inflammation and diabetes risk.
Crystalline Silica and Chronic Lung Disease

| National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health | CDC/NIOSH | 2024 

Inhaling respirable crystalline silica can cause silicosis, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and kidney disease.
Coal-Mine Dust and Chronic Disease

| National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health | CDC/NIOSH | 2024 

Coal-mine dust exposure causes pneumoconiosis and contributes to progressive lung impairment and other respiratory diseases.
Formaldehyde Exposure and Cancer

| National Cancer Institute | NCI | 2024 

Formaldehyde exposure can occur in workplaces, building materials, smoke, and consumer products and is associated with certain cancers.

Climate, Air, and Built-Environment Exposures

Climate Change and Noncommunicable Diseases

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Climate change modifies heat, pollution, pollen, food security, physical activity, infectious disease, migration, and access to chronic-disease care.
Extreme Heat and Chronic Disease Mortality

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Extreme heat increases cardiovascular and respiratory strain and poses particular risks to people with diabetes, kidney disease, and limited cooling access.
Urban Heat Islands and Health Inequality

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Urban heat exposure often overlaps with sparse tree cover, dense development, air pollution, poverty, and racialized patterns of neighborhood investment.
Drought, Dust, and Respiratory Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Drought increases airborne dust, wildfire risk, pollen, soil microbes, and other respiratory hazards capable of aggravating asthma.
Desert Dust and Cardiopulmonary Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Desert-dust particles can transport minerals, metals, microbes, allergens, and pollutants across long distances and affect respiratory health.
Flooding, Mold, and Chronic Respiratory Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Flooding can leave persistent dampness, mold, sewage contamination, displacement, stress, and disrupted asthma management.
Wildfire Smoke and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Wildfire smoke may worsen glucose control and cardiovascular stress while increasing emergency risks among people with diabetes.
Wildfire Smoke and Childhood Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Children with asthma are especially vulnerable to fine particles and irritant gases generated during wildfires.
Thirdhand Smoke Exposure

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Tobacco residues persist on surfaces and in dust, react with indoor chemicals, and create continuing exposure after smoking has stopped.
Indoor Volatile Organic Compounds and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Paints, furnishings, cleaners, fragrances, building materials, and combustion sources release volatile compounds that may irritate or sensitize airways.
Indoor Air Pollution and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Researchers investigate whether long-term indoor smoke and particle exposure contributes to inflammation, insulin resistance, and diabetes.
Ventilation and Respiratory Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Ventilation affects concentrations of particles, gases, moisture, allergens, microbes, and respiratory viruses in homes, schools, and workplaces.
Road Proximity and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Living near major roads can increase exposure to traffic particles, nitrogen oxides, noise, artificial light, heat, and reduced opportunities for active travel.
Airport Noise and Cardiometabolic Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Chronic aircraft noise can disrupt sleep and activate stress pathways associated with hypertension, metabolic disease, and cardiovascular risk.
Artificial Light at Night and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Nighttime light exposure can disturb circadian rhythms and is studied in relation to sleep, obesity, diabetes, and hormone-sensitive cancers.
Walkability and Chronic Disease Prevention

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Walkable neighborhoods may support physical activity and healthier body weight while reducing dependence on polluting motor vehicles.
Green Space, Cancer, and Metabolic Health

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Green space may influence disease through physical activity, pollution reduction, heat mitigation, social contact, stress recovery, and microbial exposure.
Blue Space and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Living near coasts, rivers, and lakes may support activity and mental health while also introducing flooding, contamination, or recreational exposure risks.
Secondhand Smoke and Chronic Disease

| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC | 2024 

Secondhand smoke causes lung cancer and cardiovascular disease and can initiate or worsen respiratory illness in children and adults.
Household Air Pollution from Solid Fuels

| World Health Organization | WHO | 2023 

Smoke from wood, coal, charcoal, dung, and kerosene contributes to chronic respiratory disease, lung cancer, cardiovascular illness, and premature mortality.

Infection, Immunity, and Internal Biological Responses

The Infectious Exposome and Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Viruses, bacteria, parasites, immune responses, antimicrobial treatments, and social conditions form an infectious exposome affecting cancer risk.
Early-Life Viral Infections and Type 1 Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Researchers investigate whether enteroviruses and other infections initiate or accelerate autoimmune destruction of pancreatic beta cells.
The Hygiene Hypothesis and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

The hygiene hypothesis proposes that reduced microbial diversity during early life can alter immune maturation and increase allergic-disease susceptibility.
Antimicrobial Exposure and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Antibiotics and antimicrobial chemicals can reshape microbiota and potentially affect metabolic, immune, allergic, and inflammatory diseases.
Chronic Inflammation and Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Persistent inflammation can promote DNA damage, abnormal cell growth, blood-vessel formation, and immune conditions favorable to cancer.
Inflammation and Insulin Resistance

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Environmental and lifestyle exposures can activate inflammatory pathways that interfere with insulin signaling and glucose regulation.
Airway Inflammation and the Asthma Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Allergens, pollution, infections, chemicals, stress, and metabolic factors can produce distinct patterns of airway inflammation.
Oxidative Stress in Cancer, Diabetes, and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Oxidative stress is a shared biological mechanism connecting many environmental exposures with DNA damage, insulin resistance, and airway injury.
Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Chemical exposures and metabolic imbalance can disrupt protein processing and activate stress pathways involved in diabetes, cancer, and inflammation.
Environmental Exposure and Autophagy

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Pollutants and toxicants may alter cellular recycling mechanisms that influence inflammation, metabolic function, tumor development, and tissue repair.
Immune Metabolism and Environmental Exposure

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Environmental exposures can change the energy use of immune cells, influencing chronic inflammation, allergy, insulin resistance, and cancer immunity.
Metabolic Endotoxemia and Diabetes

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Diet and microbiome disruption may allow bacterial products to enter circulation and promote inflammation and insulin resistance.
Gut-Lung Axis and Asthma

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Diet, antibiotics, microbes, and microbial metabolites can influence respiratory immunity through communication between the gut and lungs.
Gut Microbiome and Colorectal Cancer

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Dietary and environmental exposures can shape intestinal microbial communities that influence inflammation, DNA damage, and colorectal carcinogenesis.
Oral Microbiome and Chronic Disease

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Oral microbes and inflammation are investigated in relation to diabetes, respiratory disease, cardiovascular illness, and several cancers.
Viral Exposures and Asthma Exacerbations

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Respiratory viruses interact with allergens, pollution, weather, immunity, and asthma treatment to cause acute exacerbations.
Biological Embedding of the Exposome

| Various authors | PubMed Research Collection | 2018–2026 

Biological embedding describes how repeated social and environmental experiences produce lasting changes in immune, endocrine, metabolic, and epigenetic systems.
Human Papillomavirus and Cancer

| National Cancer Institute | NCI | 2024 

Persistent infection with high-risk human papillomaviruses can cause cervical and several other anogenital and head-and-neck cancers.
Hepatitis Viruses and Liver Cancer

| National Cancer Institute | NCI | 2024 

Chronic hepatitis B and C infections can cause persistent liver damage, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma.
Helicobacter pylori and Stomach Cancer

| National Cancer Institute | NCI | 2023 

Chronic Helicobacter pylori infection promotes stomach inflammation and is an important preventable cause of gastric cancer.
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