Characterization of the Exposome using Fresh Air Wristbands
Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Public Health
First Advisor
Godri Pollitt, Krystal
Abstract
Air pollution is a major global public health threat. Exposure to air pollution has been linked to various health outcomes, including stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and acute and chronic respiratory diseases. The exposome encompasses all our personal exposures to environmental risk factors, spanning chemical, physical, biological and social dimensions. Airborne chemical pollutants are ubiquitous and may be toxic, even at trace levels. Despite the significance of the issue, the absence of a standardized approach for characterizing the complex mixtures of chemical exposures has greatly hindered the operationalization of exposomic assessment. Passive sampling techniques have been widely used to assess ambient air pollution levels at fixed sites. Unlike active sampling techniques, which require a battery and pump to draw air through a sampling material, passive samplers absorb and/or adsorb airborne environmental pollutants onto a sorbent material through diffusion. These passive samplers are cost-efficient and require minimal maintenance during sampling, making them suitable for large-scale and longitudinal assessment of chemical environmental pollutants. Wearable passive samplers in the wristband form have been developed to capture a diverse range of chemical pollutants while people conduct daily activities. The Fresh Air wristband is a well-known wearable passive sampler that has been deployed internationally in four continents and across different age groups. The Fresh Air wristband coupled with gas-chromatography high resolution mass spectrometry is ideal for assessment of a diverse profile of compounds, covering a large proportion of chemical environmental contaminants. This dissertation demonstrates that Fresh Air wristbands can operationalize exposomic measurements to facilitate exposomic research, ultimately fostering actionable and preventative solutions to global public health problems. The first chapter evaluates the performance of the Fresh Air wristband technology by testing the uptake of chemicals in various daily activity scenarios, simulating different levels of activity intensity and indoor temperature conditions. The findings can be used to report personal exposure measurements in a standardized approach. The second chapter offers comparisons between Fresh Air wristbands and silicone wristbands, a conventional variation of wearable passive samplers. Personal exposures of thirty study participants wearing both types of wristbands are compared through targeted analysis and suspect screening. The results illustrate the importance of harmonizing exposomic methods, from sampling techniques to analytical approaches, to increase the accuracy and precision of exposomic measurements. Finally, the third chapter presents a global perspective on the exposome characterized by Fresh Air wristbands. Chemical profiles of the exposome were developed for ten cohorts, including children and adults from four continents. Ubiquitous chemical exposures were found in all regions, and distinct exposures were identified, differing between childhood and adulthood, and in low- or middle-income countries and high-income countries. This study presents a novel paradigm for operationalizing exposomic measurements to investigate chemical exposure signatures across diverse populations. Taken together, the reported findings advance the field of exposomics by operationalizing research methodologies and measurements, offering insights into the performance of wearable passive samplers under dynamic behavior scenarios, variations in environmental contexts, and for various populations of interest Thus, this work contributes to public health research by advancing our understanding of the exposome, which is crucial for devising equitable and actionable preventative solutions to mitigate personal exposures to toxic environmental contaminants.
Recommended Citation
Lin, Elizabeth Ziying, "Characterization of the Exposome using Fresh Air Wristbands" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1478.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1478
