Human Exposome Data Standards

Environmental exposures such as air pollution, diet, physical activity, and social stress can influence the onset of disease. These effects often accumulate slowly over time and can depend on multiple factors such as lifestyle, occupation, and living conditions. Currently, environmental data is captured in different ways by research groups internationally, making it hard to compare or combine this information.

The Human Exposome Data Standards Study Group is working to solve a big problem in global health research: there are not yet consistent, shared ways to describe how the environment affects human health — especially over long periods of time and across different populations.

This Study Group aims to create international standards to help researchers capture and share environmental exposure data more easily and accurately. These standards will help combine genetic and environmental data in population cohorts (e.g. UK Biobank and All of Us Research Program), making it possible to uncover new insights into how one’s surroundings shape health and disease over time.