Grant: Foundation Grant

Environmental exposures have an important impact on public health. Specifically, outdoor fine particulate air pollution is known to contribute to cancer and heart disease and emerging evidence suggests a possible association with brain illnesses including dementia. However, we still know surprisingly little about how the specific sources and components of particulate air pollution ultimately impact population-health. New approaches to exposure assessment are needed to address this crucial knowledge gap. These approaches must incorporate emerging technologies and new chemical assays and must be scalable to large populations to take advantage of population-based cohorts available in Canada. Moreover, this evidence must be integrated and communicated in a manner that is accessible to the general population to affect change not only through regulatory decision making but also through individual-level behavioural changes. Our research program will address these issues in a number of important ways. The first theme will focus on developing new exposure models for airborne pollutants in metropolitan areas. One example includes combustion-related nanoparticles that have been shown to reach the brain and may contribute to neurological illnesses. The second theme will apply these new models to population-based cohorts to evaluate population health risks. The third theme will focus on panel studies of local environmental health issues that can inform policy interventions. One example includes evaluating the impact of air pollution from residential wood burning on children's health. The fourth component will integrate knowledge across program areas to provide direct dissemination of results to government stakeholders and the public. Our vision is to identify and evaluate new environmental risk factors for chronic diseases to decrease the burden of illness associated with environmental contaminants originating from human activities and climate change.