Aghaei, Mina and Khoshnamvand, Nahid and Janjani, Hosna and Dehghani, Mohammad Hadi and Rao Karri, Rama (2024) Exposure to environmental pollutants: A mini-review on the application of wastewater-based epidemiology approach. J Environ Health Sci Eng ..
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is considered an innovative and promising tool for estimating community exposure to a wide range of chemical and biological compounds by analyzing wastewater. Despite scholars' interest in WBE studies, there are uncertainties and limitations associated with this approach. This current review focuses on the feasibility of the WBE approach in assessing environmental pollutants, including pesticides, heavy metals, phthalates, bisphenols, and personal care products (PCPs). Limitations and challenges of WBE studies are initially discussed, and then future perspectives, gaps, and recommendations are presented in this review. One of the key limitations of this approach is the selection and identification of appropriate biomarkers in studies. Selecting biomarkers considering the basic requirements of a human exposure biomarker is the most important criterion for validating this new approach. Assessing the stability of biomarkers in wastewater is crucial for reliable comparisons of substance consumption in the population. However, directly analyzing wastewater does not provide a clear picture of biomarker stability. This uncertainty affects the reliability of temporal and spatial comparisons. Various uncertainties also arise from different steps involved in WBE. These uncertainties include sewage sampling, exogenous sources, analytical measurements, back-calculation, and estimation of the population under investigation. Further research is necessary to ensure that measured pollutant levels accurately reflect human excretion. Utilizing data from WBE can support healthcare policy in assessing exposure to environmental pollutants in the general population. Moreover, WBE seems to be a valuable tool for biomarkers that indicate healthy conditions, lifestyle, disease identification, and exposure to pollutants. Although this approach has the potential to serve as a biomonitoring tool in large communities, it is necessary to monitor more metabolites from wastewater to enhance future studies.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA1001 Forensic Medicine. Medical jurisprudence. Legal medicine |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences > School of Medicine |
| Depositing User: | samira sepahvandy |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Jul 2024 06:10 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Jul 2024 06:10 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lums.ac.ir/id/eprint/4819 |
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