Project summary
This research project investigates the possible impact of global climate change on reproductive health in Arctic and three local European populations. The key questions to be addressed are, first, how may climate change impact on human exposure to widespread environmental contaminants and, second, how may contaminants impact on occurrence of reproductive disorders as sensitive indicators of health.
To provide affirmative answers to these questions the project will
(i) identify and describe mechanisms by which a changing climate may affect the exposure of arctic and other human populations to contaminants through change in chemical use and emissions, delivery to the arctic ecosystem as well as processing within the arctic physical environment and human food chain. This work relies on modeling of existing data.
(ii) expand the existing knowledge database on human exposure to polybrominated diphenylethers, perfluorinated surfactants and phthalates by analyses of 1000 biobanked serum samples collected in the EU FP5 programme INUENDO
(iii) increase the limited knowledge on links between human exposure to contaminants and reproductive health. This work relies on a large existing parent-child-cohort, where a follow-up survey provide new data that are fed into risk assessment
(iv) perform reviews of experimental and epidemiological literature to identify critical reproductive effects and exposure response data for the selected compounds as input to the risk assesment
(v) integrate data on relative climate induced changes in contaminant mobility and distribution and links between contaminant exposure and reproductive health into a risk evaluation providing insight into possible future risk scenarios related to global climate change.
The project draws upon a network of experts in climate modeling and in experimental, epidemiological and risk assessment methodologies and builds upon three established cohorts in Greenland, Poland and Ukraine.
The project is organised in 7 work packages listed below
WP1 Management and quality assurance.
Lead by: Aarhus University
Hospital, Aarhus Sygehus.
In addition to general management and coordination, WP1 takes care of
assembling of a detailed study protocol based on input from the project partners
and periodic reprorts to the commission.
WP2
Modelling
climate change and
contaminant
mobility and distribution
Lead by:
Governing
Council of the University of Toronto
The
main tasks of WP2 includes identification of mechanisms by which changing
climate may affect the exposure of Arctic populations to contaminants, and
estimate changes in the extent of contaminant delivery to the Arctic and changes
in processing of contaminants within the physical Arctic environment.
WP3 Exposure assessment
Lead by: Lund University
The main objectives are to develop new methods for analysis of phthalate
methabolites in serum, and analyse 1000 biobanked serum samples for the content
of perflourinated comounds, hexachlorbenzen, phthalate metabolites, heavy metals
and polybrominated diphenyl ethers in a smaller subset of 300 samples.
WP4 Male and Female fertility
Lead by: Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus Sygehus
The main objective of WP4 is to perform assessement of male and female fertility
in relation to exposure to the contaminants measured in WP3.
WP5 Growth and development
Lead by: Greenland Institute of Natural Resources
In WP5, new data on childhood growth and development are collected from a cohort
of approximately 1500 mother child pairs and analysed in relation to in utero
exposure to the chemicals measured in WP3.
WP6 Gene-Environment interaction and epigenetics
Lead by: Lund University
The main objectives in WP6 is to assess the impact of polymorphisms in strategic
genes related to androgen, estrogen and aryl hydrocarbon pathway on the adverse
effects of xenobiotics on reproductive function and to measure global
methylation status in human semen samples.
WP7 Causal inference, risk assessment and dissemination
The main tasks in WP5 will be to develop models for evaluation of internal
exposure based on predicted changes in exposure levels from
WP2 and measured level of expousure from WP3 to be used for human risk
assessment.
Furthermore all the obtained epidemiological data will be critically scrutinized
to evaluate the level of evidence gained from the obtained results. In a final
step all results from the project will be used for risk assessment and risk
evaluation providing insight into possible future risk scenarios related to
global climate change.
