From Pollution to Prevention

On World Environment Day 2025, the global spotlight is on eliminating plastic pollution amid growing concerns over microplastic toxicity and environmental health risks. With India bearing 25% of the global environmental disease burden, there is a pressing need to adopt integrated, data-driven approaches like exposomics for sustainable public health.

From Crisis to Complexity: Understanding the Environmental Health Challenge

The Burden and Complexity of Environmental Risks

• Environmental Burden is Underestimated
  • As per the 2021 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, environmental and occupational risk factors (OEH) accounted for 18.9% of global deaths (12.8 million) and 14.4% of all DALYs.
  • India alone faces 3 million deaths annually due to OEH risks, which contribute over 50% of the non-communicable disease burden.
• Microplastics and Invisible Hazards
  • Microplastics represent just one among thousands of environmental risks that current sensing technologies cannot measure accurately.
  • Lack of sensory or monitoring capabilities exacerbates chronic exposure without visible indicators, leading to a silent health crisis.
• Inadequacy of Current Disease Models
  • Present models consider only ~11 categories of environmental risk due to insufficient human exposure data.
  • Complex mixtures (e.g., solid waste, noise pollution) and interactive risks with behaviour, metabolism, or genetics remain excluded from most public health assessments.

The Exposome and its Scientific Foundations

• What is the Exposome?
  • Coined post-Human Genome Project, the exposome refers to all lifetime environmental exposures and their interaction with internal biology to shape disease risk.
  • Unlike traditional hypothesis-based studies, exposomics accounts for multiple variables across the life course.
• Technological Backbone of Exposomics
  • Tools include:
    • Wearables for real-time personal exposure tracking.
    • Untargeted chemical analysis of human bio-samples.
    • Organs-on-a-chip for simulating physiological responses.
    • Big Data and AI for Environmental-Wide Association Studies (EWAS), paralleling Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS).
• Current Gaps and Needs
  • India lacks a unified exposomic data ecosystem.
  • There's an urgent need for interoperable repositories and harmonised data platforms for integration across environmental, public health, and genomic datasets.

India’s Strategic Opportunity in Environmental Health

• Disproportionate Impacts on Vulnerable Populations
  • Environmental risks are magnified by socio-economic inequalities, lack of health infrastructure, and climate-induced compound hazards (e.g., air pollution + heatwaves).
  • Children are particularly vulnerable, e.g., lead exposure accounts for 154 million IQ point losses in Indian children under five.
• Leapfrogging to Precision Public Health
  • Exposomics offers India a cost-effective opportunity to move directly to AI- and data-driven predictive health models.
  • Integration into public health systems can mainstream environment-health linkages and support precision medicine.
• Policy Imperatives and Institutional Coordination
  • Requires:
    • Cross-sectoral coordination (Environment, Health, IT, Science & Tech).
    • Strategic investments in long-term surveillance, citizen science, and risk modeling.
    • Embedding environmental health indicators in national health databases.

Practice Question:

Q. "India faces a disproportionately high burden of environmental diseases, yet its environmental risk assessment frameworks remain fragmented. In this context, critically examine the relevance and feasibility of adopting the exposome framework for holistic public health planning in India."