The Socio-Exposome: Advancing Environmental Science in a Post-Genomic Era

• In Event: 211 - Section on Environment and Technology Paper Session. Environmental Inequality

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel conceptual approach to research on gene-environment interaction – the socio-exposome. This concept builds on and extends recent efforts to measure and characterize environmental exposures from the prenatal period throughout the life course. Advocates for this approach have coined the term “the exposome” (Wild (2005); (2012)), and defined it as all causes of disease not determined by “the genome.” Some even hope to produce a Human Exposome Project (Arnaud 2010) that is as precise and comprehensive as the Human Genome Project. Environmental scientists have already begun to develop tools to measure it (Rappaport and Smith 2010). Although the original exposome concept notionally included social determinants of health within its scope, it remains unclear how these would be measured and by whom. Socio-exposomics as we conceive it would deploy social science expertise in collaboration with community environmental justice movements in order to assess non-biological exposures such as the built environment, access to greenspace, political representation, inequality, and historical injustice. We worry that neglect of the sociological aspects of exposure may result in the molecularization of a complex social phenomena (Shostak and Moinester 2015) and render exposure inequality invisible. It could also limit the possibility of collective environmental action by creating a totalizing scientific discourse that excludes alternative environmental narratives. As a corrective to this, we show how the socio-exposome will demand new forms of civic engagement and social action. We call this “exposure citizenship.”

Authors

• Bridget Hanna, Northeastern University

• Laura Senier, Northeastern University

• Phil Brown, Northeastern University

• Sara N. Shostak, Brandeis University