From the Complete Exposome to an Actionable Exposure Profile in Occupational Health

Abstract

Occupational health has traditionally focused on identifying and assessing individual hazards and examining their associations with specific health outcomes. This approach has generated valuable evidence for identifying and controlling occupational risks; however, it may not fully capture the complexity of workers’ exposure environments. Growing attention to occupational co-exposures has prompted a shift from assessing single agents to considering multiple exposures simultaneously¹. This approach can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the factors affecting workers’ health and facilitate the investigation of cumulative or interactive effects of multiple exposures. Nevertheless, even assessments of multiple workplace exposures may not capture the full exposure context relevant to a worker’s health. Beyond the workplace, individuals encounter environmental, behavioral, and social factors that may affect health independently or through interactions with occupational exposures². This broader perspective brings the exposome concept into focus. The exposome encompasses an individual’s non-genetic exposures throughout life and considers their relationships with biological responses and health over time³. In occupational health, the working-life exposome concept has also been introduced to capture a broader range of exposures and factors associated with working life, including the links between occupational and non-occupational exposures, and to move beyond narrowly defined “one exposure–one health outcome” frameworks⁴.