Environment & Exposome

Alcohol (ethanol) is a confirmed human carcinogen (Group 1). And chronic drinking speeds up your biological aging through several mechanisms. Your body oxidizes ethanol into…

Chronic psychological stress is a sustained sense of threat or demand that keeps your stress system (the HPA axis) switched on. That means your cortisol stays high for long…

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are outside substances that mess with your hormones. They block, mimic, or derail how hormones are made, moved, or sensed. Two famous…

Your exposome is the sum of every environmental exposure you meet from conception to death: chemical, physical, biological, lifestyle, and social. Christopher Wild coined the…

Green space exposure means how close you live to, or how much time you spend in, vegetated places: city parks, street trees, or forests. It includes the Japanese practice of…

Lead, cadmium, and inorganic mercury are the heavy metals most consistently linked to chronic low-level exposure and harm in human studies. Each has its own route in. Lead comes…

Indoor air quality (IAQ) is the chemical, biological, and physical makeup of the air inside buildings. Adults in rich countries spend about 90% of their time indoors. The key…

Artificial light at night (ALAN), from streetlights, screens, and indoor bulbs, throws off your body clock. It works through special cells in your retina (ipRGCs, which carry a…

Microplastics are solid plastic particles smaller than 5 mm (including nanoplastics, which are sub-micron). They come from larger plastic debris breaking down, plus synthetic…

Indoor mold grows wherever your building stays damp. The usual culprits are Stachybotrys chartarum, plus Aspergillus and Penicillium species. They can release living spores,…

Environmental noise pollution is unwanted sound from roads, rail, aircraft, and industry. Chronic exposure raises your heart-disease risk and death, through non-hearing pathways.…

PFAS ('per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances') are a class of thousands of synthetic chemicals with extremely stable carbon-fluorine bonds. That stability makes them persist in the…

PM2.5 is airborne particles 2.5 micrometers across or smaller. They come mostly from combustion: vehicle exhaust, power plants, wood burning, and industry, plus secondary…

Radon-222 is a colorless, odorless, naturally occurring radioactive noble gas. It forms when uranium-238 decays in soil and rock, and it builds up in basements and ground-floor…

Shift work is any schedule that pushes your working hours outside the usual 7am-to-6pm window, including fixed nights and rotating shifts. It chronically misaligns your behavior…

Social determinants of health (SDoH) are the non-medical conditions in which you are born, grow, live, work, and age. They include income, education, job quality, housing,…

Tobacco smoking is one of the strongest known accelerators of biological aging. And it is one you can actually change. It works through at least three mechanisms. First, it…

Photoaging is the cumulative skin damage from chronic exposure to the sun's ultraviolet (UV) light. It is distinct from intrinsic aging (chronoaging). UVA (320 to 400 nm) reaches…