Human exposure has obvious spaciousness. Three traditional geographic information technologies (RS, GIS and GPS) provide more comprehensive, timely, accurate and objective information for exposure assessment. In the past decades, these technologies have been widely used in various environmental exposure assessments. At the same time, the development of various portable environmental monitoring instruments in recent years is also easier to combine with other technologies. By combining geographic information technology with portable monitoring instruments, timely space exposure data can be obtained, which makes the exposure assessment more accurate. The development of personal mobile phone and its network has brought great prospects for the study of exposed groups. Personal mobile phones have become a necessity in people's modern life. There are more than 654.38 billion mobile phone users and 5.2 billion mobile phone users with mobile, audio, visual and positioning systems in the world. If the mobile phone is equipped with the corresponding environmental detection system (such as the monitoring device for atmospheric particles and volatile organic pollutants) and its software and network, the exposure information of each user will be transmitted to the terminal, forming a huge environmental exposure database, which provides a reliable data for studying human exposure (National Research Council of National Academy of America, 20 12). Michael Jeret believes that personal remote sensing technology can comprehensively and truly evaluate the exposure we face. The device with remote sensing spatial reference technology and model can continuously, timely and truly evaluate individual exposure differences caused by geographical location, activities and lifestyle. For example, the intensity, type and geographical location of a person's activities can reflect air breathing exposure, contact and swallowing of toxic pollutants.
In order to fully trace the whole process of pollutants affecting human health, it is the key to develop a sensor with low price, high sensitivity and high selectivity. Professor Tao used a tuning fork sensor to convert chemical signals into mechanical signals, and developed a personal exposure monitoring system that can work in harsh environments. Through this system, a variety of volatile organic pollutants, acidic pollutants and humidity can be measured quantitatively and timely. In this device, the monitoring system module is connected to the smart phone. The sensor is worn on the arm, which provides personal exposed breathing area data. The real-time exposure data is stored in the mobile phone, and these data are transmitted to the computer server that researchers can access. After the BP oil spill in April 20 10, Tao research group used this device to monitor the hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Mexico and drew the spatial distribution map of hydrocarbons in this area. The average concentration of hydrocarbons obtained is similar to the data provided by the EPA monitoring station in the United States, but they found dynamic temporal and spatial changes and used the location information of hydrocarbon concentration to provide guidance for people working and living around them. Because exercise can change a person's exposure and reaction to pollutants, it is extremely important to accurately measure physical exercise for studying exposed people. Stephen Intille et al. (Albinali et al., 20 10) developed the Wocket system, which can measure personal sports activity data and send the data to personal mobile phones. Wocket system can continuously measure individual's exercise intensity, persistence and geographical location. This measurement can last for months or years. Jerret et al. used remote sensing system to investigate personal exposure and movement. The researchers dressed the volunteers with two motion detection devices and 65,438+0 smart phones with new software, which can be used to record the movement, movement time and position. The researchers obtained the data of these movements and locations, and combined with the spatial changes of air pollutants, estimated the total amount of nitrogen oxides in the air that everyone breathed. They found that travel contributes disproportionately to personal exposure dose because they.
Various new devices developed can enable researchers to obtain key exposure data and personal exposure results. Compared with the previous data, the research results of these exposures are more perfect and scientific. In the past, scientists paid attention to five key information exposed by human beings: who, what, when, where and why. Five w information for short. However, it is not enough to know these five W information, and it is still impossible to establish the real relationship between exposure and disease. To solve this problem, we must know the sixth important W information: what kind of exposure causes disease. The intervention of various omics and molecular techniques is helpful to understand the sixth W information more clearly. However, the research on monitoring human external exposure and recording personal behavior based on remote sensing technology is still in its infancy. However, these technologies are only suitable for specific populations and monitoring specific pollutants, and they still cannot fully understand all the information of human exposed populations, nor can they be applied to the health management of the public. How to comprehensively record all the information exposed by individuals and the general population is still a big problem.
5.2 Molecular Technology
Theoretically, molecular technology is a part of omics technology, but the biggest difference with omics technology is that these molecular technologies are targeted research methods, while the commonly said omics technology is not targeted. It is very valuable to study the special exposure and its corresponding molecular composition characteristics through these targeted technologies, and to characterize the characteristics of the total exposed population by combining various molecular technologies. For example, Avi Spira uses gene expression components in the human airway to find molecular markers of the body's response to smoking exposure. The existing diagnostic techniques of lung cancer include tomography and bronchoscopy, and the sensitivity of the two methods in diagnosing early lung cancer is only 50%. RNA was extracted from normal bronchial epithelial cells and run on the microarray. It was found that smokers had 80 obviously different gene expressions, which led to the increase of oxidoreductase. Will these gene expressions eventually increase? The sensitivity of biomarker chip method in diagnosing the incidence of early lung cancer is above 80%, and if combined with bronchoscopy, it can be as high as 95%. At present, independent cohort studies have confirmed that biochip technology can greatly improve the sensitivity of biomarkers and is expected to become an auxiliary diagnostic method for bronchoscopy. Another example is that many reproductive events such as ovulation and fertilization cannot be directly observed, and there are great differences among individuals. Rajeshwari Sundaram of the National Institutes of Health developed a simple and feasible method to understand the relationship between environmental exposure and reproductive outcomes. Sundaram and others have applied commercial fertilization monitors. The fluctuation of female reproductive hormones (estrone 3, glucocorticoid and luteinizing hormone) in participants was detected. This cheap, easy-to-operate and reliable monitor directly uploads hormone components to the network data analysis system. According to the appropriate pregnancy time and the missing data in the experiment, monitoring is an essential part of the longitudinal investigation of fertilization and environmental research (life). This study mainly evaluates the effects of persistent environmental chemicals on human reproduction and development. Life research asked 50 1 couple to try to get pregnant. The researchers analyzed the residual organochlorine pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls, polybrominated diphenyl ethers and perfluorocompounds in the serum of volunteers, interviewed and evaluated some influencing factors such as lifestyle, and analyzed the impact of exposure to persistent pollutants on reproductive capacity.
Molecular technology is a mature technical method, which has been widely used in clinical medicine. The main purpose of using molecular technology in the study of exposure group is to study the impact of special exposure on human health and explore the pathogens of complex diseases. At present, these studies still cannot fully clarify the relationship between diseases and human exposure, but the purpose of using this technology in exposure group research is to clarify the relationship between them.
5.3 Metabonomics technology In a sense, the concept of exposure group comes from genome, so it is necessary to use the Qualcomm quantity technology of human genome research for reference to characterize late biological events such as RNA expression (transcriptome), protein (protein group) and metabolites (metabonomics) in cells, tissues or body fluids. Because the gene expression of the same cell is not exactly the same in different growth environments and periods, the transcription group can record all the transcripts of the cell under specific functions, and different people are exposed to different external environments, so the gene expression of cells in vivo will be different. For example, in some animal experiments, it is revealed that environmental mercury exposure has obvious effects on the transcription of cjun and cfos mRNA and the expression of cjun and cfos proteins in the immediate early stage of rat brain. Therefore, the influence of environmental factors on gene expression in vivo can be recorded more clearly through transcriptomics. Protein is the material basis of life, and all cells and their important components participate in protein, so subtle changes in the body will lead to differences in protein spectrum, and the occurrence of various diseases will also lead to changes in protein. On the contrary, changes in protein will lead to diseases. For example, peroxidation in protein will lead to aging, diabetes, chronic renal failure and infection. Through protein omics research, we can record all the information of protein expression level, amino acid sequence, post-translation processing and protein interaction of a tissue or a cell, and on this basis, we can understand various biochemical processes and pathological reactions of the cell. Similarly, pollutants exposed by the environment enter the body. It may react in vivo to produce various biochemical metabolites. Metabonomics research can clearly record the spectrum and dynamic changes of metabolites after the body is stimulated by external stimuli (such as environmental pollution). Elaine Holmes and her colleagues described the metabolic characteristics of human beings and other animals to chemical exposure and lifestyle factors or events, such as diet and premature delivery. The breakthrough of research lies in the dynamic detection of various compounds. Various fingerprints were obtained from body fluids or tissues by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy or mass spectrometry and principal component analysis (PCA). Studies have found that if a lactating mother takes an over-the-counter drug: paracetamol, this drug can treat flatulence and fever, and relieve pain, and it can also be monitored in the baby's urine. However, this study recorded very short-term exposures and doses. This does not mean that paracetamol exposure will have an impact on future health. At the same time, the research team can also observe that when wild animals are exposed to the exposure limit Cd recommended by WHO, hydroxysuccinic acid and acetic acid in the kidney increase, while glutamic acid and branched-chain amino acids decrease. In a survey, Holmes' team can distinguish whether adults are born normally or prematurely by evaluating the changes of early metabolites. She explained that when a baby is born, many factors, such as premature delivery, will affect the growth of intestinal microorganisms. These bacteria vary greatly with the population, but they can still reflect the metabolic composition of health and disease. As we all know, premature delivery will lead to late cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, kidney disease and other negative health. Thomas et al. evaluated the metabolic composition of 30 young people and found that some metabolites of premature infants increased significantly, which can be used to identify symptoms of inflammation or pre-inflammation. So metabolomics can accurately record life.
Internal and external exposure will constantly cause changes in the body's biochemical information base, which is not only related to exposure, but also closely related to the occurrence of diseases. The application of Qualcomm mass spectrometry technology makes us know that these exposures have changed in organisms, and at the same time, it also makes us understand the mechanism of diseases. We should identify useful molecular markers in disease prevention and diagnosis, and develop new treatment methods according to the characteristics of individuals exposed to the crowd. The development of mass spectrometry provides valuable information for understanding the pathogenesis of diseases. Due to the successful implementation of the Human Genome Project (HGP) in recent years, various omics technologies have developed rapidly, especially in the aspect of non-targeted research, which comprehensively records all the information such as gene expression, transcription and metabolism, so that people can be more aware of all the changes in their physical development. In the study of exposure group, these Qualcomm techniques must be used to comprehensively record all the changes of the body during human exposure, so this group.
6 Challenges and prospects
Although the concept of exposure group has just been put forward, its connotation and extension have been constantly improved and updated, and the progress of biomarkers, individual detectors, imaging and other technologies will also bring unprecedented development to the study of exposure group. However, under the current technical means and analysis methods, it is still impossible to accurately quantify a person's exposure group. To carry out exposure group research, it is still necessary to develop from the concept connotation and further improve the analytical technical means and methods. At present, the study of exposure groups faces many difficulties. In short,
1) exposure group is a dynamic concept, which is not only reflected in the study of the total exposure of each person at all times, but also its connotation and extension are constantly expanding with the development of other disciplines and technologies. Exposure group studies the exposure of human body to external environment (air, water, diet), social environment, personal development stage and behavior from birth to the end of life. Therefore, it is a science to discuss human exposure and body response in dynamics. At the same time, with the emergence of new products and pollutants, the development of social culture, the infiltration of various contacts and the change of climate and environment, the connotation of exposed groups will gradually deepen and the extension will continue to expand. Because many factors are unpredictable under the current understanding, it also adds many uncertain factors to the study of exposed people.
2) The exposure group is based on exposure science and draws lessons from the research ideas and statistical methods of genomics. At present, the information about these studies is mostly scattered. How to integrate and summarize these data and provide more targeted guidance for the study of exposed groups is a huge project. Studies on human exposure routes, occupational diseases, biological indicators of individual diseases and molecular epidemics have been carried out to varying degrees. The study of exposure group should draw lessons from these methods and ideas and conduct more targeted research. How to integrate these existing achievements, establish various coupling relationships between them, and provide effective information for the research ideas and methods of the exposure group is also urgently needed. At the same time, the progress of detection methods in exposure group is beneficial to individual health protection, but the impact on public health is the research goal of exposure group. Therefore, at present and for a long time to come, the biggest obstacle of exposure group research is how to apply it to public health risk prediction and disease control. Perfecting the information of individual exposure group is the first step to establish a complete public exposure group.
3) The study of exposure group will depend on various omics technologies, but how to combine these combined technologies to give full play needs to be explored continuously. Moreover, these technologies can not completely solve the research problems of exposed groups. For example, the research focus of the exposure group is to capture various internal molecular markers, not all pollutants. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize the combination of these technologies and strengthen international cooperation. Encourage multi-directional financial investment, assign the work of sequencing specific human chromosomes to different research groups around the world to complete together, and obtain the success of local exposure information research at the regional level, thus promoting the establishment and sharing of exposure group databases. Only in this way can the study of exposure group develop at the fastest speed.
4) With the development of various technical means, the understanding of pollutant exposure routes, molecular mechanisms and the origin of diseases is gradually clear. However, the social exposure caused by socio-economic factors is difficult to be characterized by these technical means. To solve the complex relationship among social intervention, biological effect and disease risk, we need to cooperate closely with sociologists, environmental scientists, epidemiologists, molecular biologists and scientists in other fields. For details, please refer to the information of Pollution Treasure Mall or more relevant technical documents.
Therefore, the exposure group is presented to people with a brand-new concept, which brings infinite hope to human health, provides people with more opportunities to know themselves, and also provides scientists with a larger research platform and thinking space. In the foreseeable future, with the progress of various technical means, the integration and intersection of various disciplines, and the close cooperation of scientists in various fields, the information database of human exposed people will be gradually established and improved, revealing the essence, mechanism and causes of diseases of human exposure and protecting human health.