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HUMNap – Air pollution and human biomarkers of effect: an overview

Air pollution is becoming recognized as one of the most serious public health issues worldwide. Rising industrial and energy productions, the burning of fossil fuels and biomass, as well as the rise in road traffic frequency contribute to air pollution in our cities. Urban air is a complex and variable mixture of many different chemicals whose exact mechanisms of action is not known, although oxidative stress and inflammation are suspected. Human biomonitoring is an essential tool for assessing whether and to what extent environmental substances affect the human population and as such can provide valuable data on environmental exposure and help identify potential health risks. Therefore, HUMNap will determine possible associations between the air pollutants and biomarkers of exposure and early biological effects. The project will start with investigations at multiple geographical locations with different air pollution levels and origin followed by measurements of various environmental airborne pollutants. The next step will be a detailed assessment of different biomarkers of exposure and early effects (genomic instability and oxidative stress) in human populations living in those geographical locations. HUMNap will promote state- of-art techniques and research approaches to develop risk assessments of human exposure to airborne pollutants. The results from HUMNap will demonstrate how airborne pollutants affect early molecular events important for disease development in different human blood and epithelial cells. It will also provide an assessment of possible cancer risk among human populations affected by polluted urban areas. Furthermore, HUMNap aims to draw the attention of many stakeholders such as leading scientists, policy makers, industry and the public in order to raise awareness regarding air pollution and develop monitoring regimes. Finally, HUMNap will provide new datasets necessary for scientifically based risk assessments of human populations exposed to urban air pollution.

air pollution ; comet assay ; human biomonitoring ; micronucleus assay ; oxidative stress ; particulate matter ; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons ; risk assessment

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