Exposure to contaminants via food and drinking water – potentially overlooked modifiable risk factors in chronic disease development

The hypothesis we will test is whether the prevalent exposure to the most widespread and persistent contaminants in food and drinking water compromise our health and contribute to the development of diseases of high public health relevance.

These diseases include metabolic disturbances, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and cancer, as well as effects on prenatal development.

Because accumulated data demonstrate that all these selected contaminants  are involved in various adverse pathophysiological processes, it is imperative to corroborate the indications of compromised health to correctly inform and tailor only the relevant preventive efforts.

We will use a set of prospective study designs, nation-wide registers as well as cohorts and national infrastructures with biobanks of men and women and the specific research questions are: i) What are the associations between exposure to perfluorinated (PFAS)-contaminated public drinking water and child and maternal health?

A Medial Birth Register-based study including >300 000 births. ii) What are the associations between biomarkers of acrylamide and glycidol exposure and cancer of the breast, endometrium and colorectum in a case-cohort study? iii) What are the persistent organochlorine, PFAS, acrylamide and glycidol exposure-affected OMICS signatures (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics and lipidomics) and molecular pathways underlying disease development (myocardial infarction, stroke, and breast-, endometrial and colorectal cancer)?