MRC Centre for Environment and Health

人们越来越认识到，在遗传易感性的背景下，环境暴露在人类疾病的发展和恶化中发挥着重要作用。据估计，70%至90%的疾病风险是由于环境的差异。目前，世界上一半以上的人口生活在城市环境中（全世界约有35亿人，而且还在增加）。因此，无论是在英国和其他高收入国家，还是在中低收入国家，建筑环境都在塑造人口暴露于环境危害方面发挥着关键作用。城市生活伴随着一系列环境挑战，包括空气和噪音污染，特别是与交通网络、绿色空间的使用、住房质量和其他暴露有关的污染，如来自全套数字通信系统和设备的非电离辐射。许多环境暴露无处不在，因此我们都或多或少地暴露在环境中（例如空气污染）。鉴于环境在决定人口之间和人口之间疾病率的差异方面具有压倒性的重要性，因此，通过对环境暴露进行适当的干预和控制，有很大的潜力减少疾病的发病率和死亡率，并增加预期寿命。相比之下，虽然遗传易感性很重要，但基因在总体上对人群疾病变异的贡献相对较小，并且比环境更不容易被操纵。因此，要对疾病的发生产生重大影响，我们需要i）识别现有和新出现的环境危害，ii）量化对人类个体和人群的风险，iii）更好地了解这些环境污染物的作用模式和毒性特性，iv）帮助识别风险最大的人群和个人，以便干预措施（包括预防政策和治疗）可以适当地针对性。在中心的第二次更新期间，我们建议集中研究三个普遍存在的环境挑战，即空气污染、噪音污染和非电离辐射。我们建议采取整体（“整个系统”）的方法来了解环境对疾病发展，进展和恶化的影响。我们将重点关注城市环境对健康的影响，在人口，个人和分子水平。我们将利用i）低成本技术的发展，这些技术将有助于衡量个人暴露于特定污染物的程度（例如从空气中）; ii）全面评估从生物样品中提供信息的先进分析方法（血液、尿液）暴露于环境污染物; iii）从可穿戴设备和卫星图像中收集的环境危害暴露信息（如空气污染），以及其他数据来源，捕捉人类与城市环境互动的复杂性;（iv）新方法，使我们能够将来自各种来源的数据联合收割机结合起来，一起进行分析，以更好地了解环境因素与健康的关系。为了解决与大型数据集分析相关的问题，我们将链接到英国健康数据研究（HDR）的投资（帝国和国王都是HDR英国伦敦实质性网站的一部分）。我们将利用并进一步推进计算技术的发展，以获得有关环境与健康之间因果关系的新知识。通过这种方式，我们的目标是帮助识别暴露于环境危害的风险最大的个人，从而计划向公众发出适当的信息，减轻和预防不利环境暴露对健康的影响。

Environmental exposures are increasingly recognised as playing a fundamental role in the development and exacerbation of human diseases, against a background of genetic susceptibility. Estimates suggest that 70% to 90% of disease risks are due to differences in environments. Over half of the world's population now lives in urban environments (around 3.5 billion people worldwide and increasing). Therefore, the built environment plays a critical role in shaping population exposure to environmental hazards, both in the UK and other high-income countries and in Lower and Middle-Income Countries. Urban living is accompanied by a range of environmental challenges including air and noise pollution, especially related to transport networks, access to green space, housing quality and other exposures such as non-ionising radiation from the panoply of digital communications systems and devices. Many environmental exposures are ubiquitous and therefore we are all exposed to a greater or lesser extent (e.g. air pollution). Given the overwhelming importance of the environment in determining variation in disease rates both between and across populations, there is great potential to reduce morbidity and mortality from disease, and increase life expectancy, from appropriate interventions and controls on environmental exposures. By contrast, although genetic susceptibility is important, genes contribute overall to a relatively small component of disease variation in populations and are much less open to manipulation than the environment. Therefore, to have major impact on disease occurrence, we need to i) identify existing and emerging environmental hazards, ii) quantify the risk to human individuals and populations, iii) better understand the mode of action and toxic properties of such environmental contaminants, and iv) help identify populations and individuals at greatest risk so that interventions (including prevention policies and treatments) can be appropriately targeted. In this second renewal period of the Centre, we propose to focus our research efforts on three ubiquitous environmental challenges, air pollution, noise pollution and non-ionising radiation. We propose to take a holistic ('whole systems') approach to understand the influence of the environment on disease development, progression and exacerbation. We will focus on the influence of urban environments on health, at population, individual and molecular levels. We will exploit developments in i) low-cost technologies that will help measure the extent that individuals are exposed to specific pollutants (e.g. from air); ii) comprehensive assessment of advanced analytical methods that provide information from biological samples (blood, urine) on exposure to environmental contaminants; iii) information on exposure to environmental hazards collected from wearable devices and from satellite images (e.g. air pollution), and other data sources that capture the complexity of human interactions with the city environment; iv) new methods that allow us to combine data from a variety of sources and analyse them together to better understand the relationships of environmental factors and health. To address the issues related to the analysis of very large datasets, we will link to the investments that have been made in Health Data Research (HDR) UK (both Imperial and King's are part of the HDR UK London substantive site). We will utilise and further advance developments in computational techniques to gain new knowledge on the causal links between environment and health. In this way we aim to help identify individuals at greatest risk from their exposures to environmental hazards, and thus plan for appropriate messaging to the public, mitigation and prevention of the effects of the adverse environmental exposures on health.