The three-day workshop on environmental public health concluded on 5 January 2024 at CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (CSIR-NEERI). Experts from India and abroad participated in the workshop.
Seven technical sessions on different themes and one interactive session were held during the workshop. Presentations were made on diverse topics, including air pollution epidemiology, indoor and outdoor air pollution and its impacts on health, endocrine disrupting chemicals, emerging environmental exposures and pulmonary morbidity, exposome concept, biomarkers, genetic and epigenetic strategies to assess impact of emerging contaminants on health.
On the second day of the workshop, the ‘exposome’ emerged as a concept under the auspices of the field of environmental health sciences, which is primarily composed of environmental epidemiology, exposure science, and toxicology. ‘Exposome’has the potential to improve population-based studies by providing greater detail and resolution about environmental contributors to disease, said Dr. David Balshaw, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), USA. We need to develop biomarkers for early detection to predict andprevent disease, said Dr. Irina Stepanov, Distinguished Professor, University of Minnesota. Dr. Anirban Middey, Principal Scientist, CSIR-NEERI discussed about the ‘Urban Airshed Model (UAM)’ for better air quality assessment and management.
The workshop also featured a series of interactive discussions among experts and participants. The experts discussed about the possible future work and collaboration in the area of environment and health, covering exchange of talents, exposure biology, exposure and susceptibility, biomarkers analysis, capacity building between India and USA. Dr. T K Joshi, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi urged scientists to focus on occupational health, and develop cheap and affordable blood test kits for occupationally exposed workers to detect metals like lead, cadmium, etc. He also stressed on the need to set-up more such testing laboratories in India for occupationally exposed workers. Dr. Richard Woychik, Director, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and National Toxicology Program, NIH USA advised to integrate environment into health sciences. Dr. Irfan Rahman, University of Rochester, USA advocated for biorepositories to enable translational research that brings patients closer to precision medicine. Dr. Nitin Labhsetwar, Chief Scientist and Head, Energy and Resource Management Division, CSIR-NEERI emphasized on the need to develop a robust data quality framework to precisely deal with environment and health. The experts and participants of the workshop also visited the open cast coal mine, Gondegaon, Nagpur to see mining operations and related occupational health and safety aspects.