Innovations in the Measurement and Analysis of Environmental Exposures

每一天，美国的每一个公民都在她或他的环境中暴露于未知数量的天然和合成化学物质-通过我们呼吸的空气，我们吃的食物，我们喝的水，以及我们日常生活中使用的消费品。大多数从事环境和公共卫生工作的研究人员现在认识到，这些日常暴露可能在我们的健康和整个生命过程中发挥重要作用。例如，总统癌症小组2008-2009年年度报告《减少环境癌症风险》强调了人类广泛接触工业化学品的证据，并对环境引起的癌症风险被严重低估和记录不足表示严重关切。然而，尽管有一些新的工具，如人体生物监测和分析化学的进步，可以测量个体身体所携带的化学负担，其准确性和复杂性越来越高，但环境暴露研究领域的投资水平远远低于其他技术。例如，在衡量和调查基因组联系与健康结果之间的关系方面的公共和私人投资超过了在开发和使用环境暴露技术方面的投资。本次研讨会致力于解决以下问题：在记录环境暴露时，什么可以作为证据？社会科学家、工程师和计算机科学家如何合作，在数据收集和分析方面进行创新？环境暴露如何在公共政策中发挥作用？该讲习班将汇集来自不同学科背景和机构的研究人员，以制定收集环境暴露数据并将其转化为健康和政策背景的战略。讲习班将利用社会学、科学和技术研究、流行病学、信息系统、环境工程和生物传感器等领域的专门知识以及翻译和语境化工具。然而，更多的数据和/或新的接触技术并不一定会带来有意义的知识。该研讨会旨在促进跨学科合作，确保开发新的接触技术和方法的努力受益于来自各个领域的投入。研讨会将产生广泛的影响，提出一套收集新数据和更好地利用现有环境接触数据的可能举措。研讨会将包括研究生作为参与者。讲习班的结果将在化学品遗产基金会网站上广泛分发，并通过印刷品来源广泛传播，以确保广泛获取。

Each day, every citizen of the U.S. is exposed to an unknown number of natural and synthetic chemicals in her or his environment--through the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, and the consumer products we use as a part of our daily routines. Most researchers working in environmental and public health now recognize that these daily exposures likely play a significant role in our health and well being across the life course. The 2008-2009 Annual Report of the Presidents Cancer Panel, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk, for example, highlighted evidence of widespread human exposure to industrial chemicals and the serious concern that environmentally induced cancer risks have been profoundly underestimated and under-documented. Yet, despite some new tools, such as human biomonitoring and the advancements in analytical chemistry, that can measure the chemical burden that individual bodies carry with increasing degrees of exactness and sophistication, the field of environmental exposure studies has not received anywhere near the level of investment given to other techniques. For example, public and private investment in the measurement and investigation of the relation between genomic connections and health outcomes outweighs investment in the development and use of environmental exposure technologies. This workshop is devoted to addressing the following questions: What counts as evidence when documenting environmental exposures? How can social scientists, engineers, and computer scientists collaborate to produce innovations in data collection and analysis? How can environmental exposures be made to matter in public policy? The workshop will bring together researchers from a diversity of disciplinary backgrounds and institutions to develop strategies for collecting and translating environmental exposure data into health and policy contexts. The workshop will draw on the expertise developed in fields such as sociology, science and technology studies, epidemiology, information systems, environmental engineering, and biosensors as well as tools for translation and contextualization. More data and/or new exposure technologies, however, do not necessarily result in meaningful knowledge. This workshop aims to foster collaboration across disciplines to ensure that efforts to develop new exposure technologies and methods benefit from input from a variety of fields.The workshop will have broad impact by producing a set of possible initiatives for collecting new data and making better use of existing environmental exposure data. The workshop will include graduate students as participants. Workshop findings will be distributed widely on the Chemical Heritage Foundation website and through print sources to ensure broad access.