The celebration of World Environment Day 2025, focusing on plastic pollution and microplastics, has brought attention to a crucial but lesser-known field in environmental science exposomics. This emerging discipline holds immense promise for shaping a healthier future by providing deep insights into how environmental exposures over our lifetimes affect human health.
In a country like India, where 25% of the global environmental disease burden exists, the significance of understanding exposomics is vital. It allows for integrated health risk assessments that can be the foundation of proactive public health policies.
What is Exposomics?
Exposomics is the study of all environmental exposures an individual experiences from conception to death and how these exposures affect health. It includes chemical, physical, biological, and social exposures that individuals encounter in their lifetime. Unlike traditional environmental health models, exposomics doesn’t look at a single pollutant or a single point in time. Instead, it offers a comprehensive, lifelong view of environmental risk factors.
Why Exposomics is Crucial in India
- High Environmental Disease Burden: India contributes to nearly a quarter of the global environmental disease burden. Respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease, and other non-communicable diseases are rising due to chronic exposure to air pollution, unsafe water, and toxic chemicals.
- Inadequate Traditional Models: Current models like the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) do not fully account for the complexity of environmental exposures. They fail to include many risk factors such as microplastics, household air pollution, and soil contaminants.
- Emerging Environmental Risks: Rapid urbanization, climate change, and changing dietary and lifestyle habits are introducing new environmental exposures, from endocrine-disrupting chemicals to nano-pollutants.
Benefits of Exposomics for Environmental Health
- Holistic Disease Prevention: Exposomics helps map out disease etiologies over a lifetime, enabling long-term, proactive health strategies instead of reactive treatment approaches.
- Precision Public Health: With technologies like genomics and AI, exposomics can identify high-risk individuals or communities, allowing for targeted interventions.
- Data Integration: It combines chemical analysis, biomarkers, socio-economic data, and behavioral inputs to generate a complete exposure profile.
- Monitoring Complex Interactions: Exposomics can help decode complex interactions like how air pollution worsens the health impact of poor diet, stress, or pre-existing conditions.
- Enhancing Risk Assessment Tools: New models of risk prediction become possible with real-time environmental surveillance, wearable sensors, and human bio-monitoring tools.
Applications of Exposomics in India
- Air Pollution Control: By identifying specific pollutants most harmful over time, targeted air quality interventions can be designed.
- Urban Health Planning: City planning can integrate exposure data to design healthier urban environments, more green spaces, cleaner water supply, and pollution control zones.
- Agricultural Practices: Understanding the role of pesticides and soil contamination can lead to safer food production methods.
- Climate Change Mitigation: Exposomic data can inform policies related to heatwaves, floods, and vector-borne diseases.
- Health Surveillance: With wearable technologies and chemical sensors, health departments can maintain live dashboards for real-time monitoring.
Scientific Advances Supporting Exposomics
Recent advances between 1990 and 2003 laid the foundation for the human genome project. Similarly, the integration of exposomics with omics sciences (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics) and AI now allows researchers to predict how long-term exposures cause chronic diseases.
Examples include:
- Organs-on-chip technology to simulate biological responses
- High-resolution mass spectrometry for chemical profiling
- Artificial intelligence for pattern recognition and data integration
These technologies enable India to create a national exposomic framework that supports environmental policymaking, healthcare planning, and sustainable development.
Challenges and the Way Forward
- Data Gaps: Limited environmental monitoring infrastructure and lack of longitudinal health data make implementation difficult.
- Cost and Technical Expertise: High-end equipment and trained manpower are essential but currently limited.
- Policy Integration: Exposomic data needs to be accepted into mainstream health and environmental governance.
Despite challenges, exposomics represents a paradigm shift. Countries like India, with diverse environmental challenges, can leapfrog into future-ready public health by prioritizing exposomics in research, education, and policy.
Government and Institutional Roles
- NITI Aayog and MoEFCC can develop integrated exposomic-health policy frameworks.
- ICMR and CSIR can lead national-level exposomic data collection and analysis.
- UGC and AICTE can introduce exposomic science in higher education curricula.
Conclusion
Exposomics offers India an unprecedented opportunity to build a resilient, data-driven public health system. As World Environment Day 2025 reminds us of the urgent need to curb environmental degradation, exposomics provides the scientific lens to measure, monitor, and mitigate these exposures.
A national strategy to embed exposomics in environmental and health planning can transform India’s future. The time to act is now.
UPSC Mains Question (GS Paper 3 – 2025 Expected):
“Exposomics has the potential to transform environmental governance and public health in India. Discuss the challenges and opportunities in implementing an exposomic framework in the Indian context.”
UPSC Prelims PYQ (Based on Environmental Health):
Which one of the following is the best description of ‘Environment Pollution Index’ (EPI) that is frequently in the news? [2022]
A. It is a measure of carbon footprint by industrial sectors
B. It quantifies the exposure to hazardous substances
C. It is a composite index measuring environmental performance
D. It measures the degree of environmental degradation in tribal zones
Answer: C