About EIRENE
EIRENE supports interdisciplinary human exposome research in the cross-cutting area of environment & health bridging expertise in environmental & analytical chemistry, biology and toxicology, environmental & human exposure and risk assessment, epidemiology, biostatistics, bioinformatics, pharmacokinetics, and geospatial modelling.
We also address education, training, capacity-building, and efficient science-to-innovation and science-to-policy translation of research results.
Why we needed it?
A sum of exposures has been recently described in the theoretical concept of the exposome as a complex of direct and indirect exposures mediated through the environmental and socioeconomic interactions and lifestyle choices. Its assessment, however, requires the development of high throughput methods enabling quantification of biomarkers of exposure and characterization of on-going processes in human body as markers of susceptibility, effect, or additional exposure.
Cutting edge science
A holistic concept of exposome requires a shift from addressing the individual determinants of health to the interdisciplinary assessment of a wide range of factors together with the individual’s ability to cope with various stressors. In order to support such studies, we need to develop a sufficient capacity of high-resolution instruments capable of detecting complex mixtures of exogenous and endogenous chemicals, and a broad interdisciplinary expertise.
Why EIRENE
Addressing the complex problem of environmental determinants of health requires not only multidisciplinary capacities but also their coordination, harmonization, and joint exploitation. The platforms supporting this research should be sustainable in the long term since only the longitudinal environmental and population studies can provide answers to our current questions.
A global perspective
The EIRENE RI is designed to bridge several ESFRI domains and answer a need for the research infrastructure linking environmental exposures with health identified in the latest ESFRI Roadmap. While the chemical exposures are in the centre of attention of multiple strategic documents (including most recent Green Deal) there is currently no ESFRI project or landscape addressing chemical exposures, necessary technologies for their characterization, or longitudinal population cohorts enabling the long-term assessment of their health impacts.