WHAT can a sample of your blood reveal? Genetic information can uncover clues about what diseases you may develop in your lifetime, of course.
But looking for environmental markers could prove to be a lot more helpful. Researchers hope to study the 鈥渆xposome鈥�, everything that a person encounters in daily life 鈥� from diet and drug use to stress 鈥� and what risks these exposures pose to an individual鈥檚 health (see 鈥淲elcome to the exposome鈥�).
Despite scare stories about carcinogens in all that we eat, drink and breathe, we need to link the level of exposure to actual risk. By finding and comparing breakdown products in blood and urine across populations, researchers hope to figure out what these levels are, and work out how much of which chemicals will start to cause problems.
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Perhaps the most exciting implications of the exposome is that it will personalise environmentalism, like the genome personalised medicine. As biomonitoring tools become wearable, and can work in real time, people will take their exposome into their own hands. In the long term, exposomics will give individuals more power to lobby companies, politicians and the workplace for a better environment.