Should Modern Living Carry A Health
Warning?
A new £4.4m partnership programme to explore the impacts of modern living
on our health has just started to fund its first research projects.
The Environment and Human Health Programme comprises 37 projects that
cover a broad field of environmental concerns linked to human health,
including inhalation of nanoparticles, long-term exposure to pollution in
urban environments, harmful algal toxins, climate change and emerging
diseases perhaps resulting from changing agricultural practices.
Professor Mike Moore, Science Co-ordinator for the programme, said
"We know that human activity has an impact on our environment but
what is not known, in many cases, is what impact environmental degradation
is having on our health. The natural environment contributes to our health
in many ways, for example through the quality of air we breathe, the food
we eat and the water we drink."
The programme identifies and prioritises research areas where the natural
environment and human health interact, and is building a community of
scientists in the UK committed to researching this relationship. Their
research should improve our ability to identify and predict emerging
health concerns, and will also improve the evidence available to support
risk assessments and regulation-setting by the government and other policy
makers.
One of the newest emerging concerns is the possible hazard to human health
from engineered nanoparticles in our environment. Nanotechnology involves
manipulating material and creating devices on a nanometre scale (a
nanometre is one thousand-millionth of a metre). The environmental
behaviour of engineered nanoparticles is currently unknown and their
potential to harm human health is a major concern. Their miniscule size
means they can easily be inhaled, ingested or absorbed without knowledge.
The particles are currently used in over 200 commercial products including
sunblocks, creams, cosmetics and fabric coatings, and are inevitably
entering the environment either through manufacturing discharge,
accidental spillage or general use.
In one of the projects, researchers will be investigating the possible
effects of nanoparticles in the body by introducing two widely used types
of engineered nanoparticle to synthetic lung lining liquid and blood
plasma (a liquid component of blood). They will test how the synthetic
liquids affect the physical properties of the nanoparticles, and the most
and least reactive particles will then be tested with primary human lung
cells to find out whether the more reactive particles are of danger to our
health.
Lead investigator, Dr Eva Valsami-Jones from the Natural History Museum,
said, "The ecological cost of many emerging technologies is not yet
known. Nanotechnology is already widely used and standard toxicity tests
are not necessarily effective as nanoparticles do not behave like their
larger counterparts. During these first stage tests we will be looking for
any physical changes to the nanoparticles when introduced to liquids such
as blood plasma. We will look for changes to their size and structure, and
test their ability to dissolve or accumulate. Dissolved particles could be
a cause for concern as they may release potentially toxic
components."
The 37 projects all started this year and will be completed in 2008 and
2009. Environment and Human Health is led by the Natural Environment
Research Council (NERC) and is a partnership programme supported by the
Natural Environment Research Council, the Environment Agency (EA); the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra); the Ministry
of Defence (MOD); the Medical Research Council (MRC); the Welcome Trust;
the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC); the Engineering and
Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC); the Biotechnology and
Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Health Protection
Agency (HPA)
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
http://www.nerc.ac.uk
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