Objective
The objective of the project is to establish dose-response relationships (including the question of threshold) for carcinogenic risks in populations from exposure to environmental air pollutants.
Recent studies provide accumulating evidence that current levels of fossil fuel-derived air pollution in Europe
have short-term effects on health and mortality indicators (mainly related to respiratory and cardiovascular
conditions). As far as the long-term effects of air pollution are concerned, although mortality rates for lung
cancer are generally higher in urban areas, results from analytical observational studies do not conclusively
prove a link of air pollution with increased risk of lung cancer, at least at the levels of pollution observed in
Western Europe. In view of the large numbers of people exposed to polluted city air, the question of the
existence of a carcinogenic risk associated with such exposure is of major public health importance.
Recent advances in our understanding of fundamental processes in chemical carcinogenesis provide new practical
tools for field investigations aimed at the assessment of the carcinogenic risks associated with exposure to
environmental chemicals. It is now feasible to supplement measurements of external exposure and disease
incidence or mortality in populations (the usual end-points of classical epidemiology) with measurements in
individuals of molecular biomarkers which reflect biologically important steps in the pathogenesis process, thus
permitting the dissociation of some of the confounding factors which weaken the classical epidemiological
approach and achieving the detection of lower levels of risks using smaller study populations.
This project involves the investigation of the quantitative relationships between various markers of exposure to,
early biological effects of, and individual susceptibility to genotoxins present in the urban atmospheric air,
measured in human populations living in the city of Athens or in a nearby low-pollution area. Non-smoking
volunteers are being asked to carry a personal monitor for suspended particulates (PM 2.5) during a 4-day
observation period during which a detailed time-activity diary is kept indicating the places where he/she has
been, the length of time stayed, the type of activity involved, and exposure to passive smoking and other indoor
pollution sources, as well as additional information on food consumption, sunlight exposure etc. Samples of
blood and urine are then collected for analysis of various biomarkers as well as for storage with view to the
creation of a specimen bank for future analysis for additional markers of interest.
The effects of seasonal variation are being taken into account by following each individual once in the summer
and once in the winter. The quantitative relationships between the various markers will be examined by
statistical modelling using non-parametric smoothing techniques to investigate the existence of thresholds.
It is hoped that this population study, which has been designed with strict epidemiological criteria and a size
calculated to allow sufficient statistical power to distinguish between the effects of different degrees of exposure,
will provide data on dose-response relationships (including the question of the existence of threshold) which may
prove useful for the setting of air quality guidelines and for risk assessment.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- social sciencessociologydemographymortality
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologylung cancer
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic healthepidemiology
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringair pollution engineering
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
11635 ATHENS
Greece