LIH team advances research on the human chemical exposome

Scientists from the Human Biomonitoring Research Unit contribute to global effort to chart chemical exposures and improve public health

• Department of Precision Health
• Human Biomonitoring Research Unit

Researchers from the Human Biomonitoring Research Unit (HBRU) of the Department of Precision Health at the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) have contributed to a new correspondence article published in Nature Medicine, calling for a change in how environmental chemical exposures are measured and integrated into public health initiatives.

The Nature Medicine Correspondence article, Mapping the human chemical exposome for public health, highlights a major gap in understanding how environmental chemicals affect human health. While pollution is linked to millions of premature deaths each year, the vast majority of chemicals in circulation are not routinely measured in humans, and their combined effects remain largely unknown.

At the centre of the paper is the concept of the internal chemical exposome, which captures the totality of external chemicals and the compounds they transform into in the human body. Despite increasing evidence linking these exposures to a wide range of health outcomes, this dimension of human biology remains insufficiently explored. A scalable and open approach to profiling the chemicals and their by-products in human samples is missing, along with the knowledge of how real-world chemical mixtures interact with human body.

To address this, the authors introduce the Human Internal Chemical Exposome Atlas, a collaborative initiative of 20 international partners that is mapping internal chemical exposures using scalable and multi-platform mass spectrometry approaches. By combining targeted and non-targeted analyses across different biological samples using advanced machine learning approaches, the project aims to significantly expand the number of detectable compounds beyond those typically included in biomonitoring programmes. Initial work has already identified hundreds of omnipresent chemicals, with further expansion planned to capture emerging pollutants, industrial replacements, and analytically challenging compounds often missed in large biomonitoring programs.

By enabling a more comprehensive assessment of cumulative exposures and their biological effects, the initiative aims to support improved risk assessment, strengthen public health strategies and advance the integration of environmental data into precision prevention.

Understanding the chemical exposome is essential for advancing public health, as it allows us to better characterise the environmental determinants of disease and translate this knowledge into tangible preventive actions in the future,

emphasised Dr Appenzeller, Head of the HBRU.

The involvement of Dr Brice Appenzeller, Dr Alba Iglesias Gonzàlez and Dr Linda Macheka from the HBRU reflects the team’s expertise in exposome science, a key focus of the Department of Precision Health at the Luxembourg Institute of Health.