A scalable workflow to characterize the human exposome

Area of Science:

• Environmental health science
• Analytical chemistry
• Toxicology

Background:

• Understanding the human exposome, encompassing all environmental exposures, is vital for public health.
• Current chemical analysis methods are costly and limited in scope, hindering comprehensive exposome research.
• A need exists for scalable, cost-effective methods to analyze a wider range of environmental chemicals in biological samples.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel, single-step analytical workflow for operationalizing the human exposome.
• To enable high-throughput quantification of environmental chemicals in human biological matrices.
• To facilitate population-level exposome research and harmonize biomonitoring efforts.

Main Methods:

• Development of a single-step express liquid extraction technique.
• Application of gas chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry (GC-HRMS) for chemical analysis.
• Validation of the method for human plasma (200 µL) and tissue (≤100 mg) samples.

Main Results:

• The workflow successfully quantifies environmental chemicals in small volumes of human plasma and tissue.
• High resolution, sensitivity, and selectivity were achieved for mass spectral features.
• The method allows for exposome epidemiology without prior knowledge of chemical identity.

Conclusions:

• The developed method operationalizes the human exposome by enabling broad-scale chemical analysis.
• Its simplicity and efficiency support harmonization of environmental biomonitoring across laboratories.
• This approach facilitates population-level human exposome research with limited sample volumes.