Biomarkers of Oxidative Stress from Environmental and Occupational Exposure: Implications for Health Risk Assessment

Dear Colleagues,

Humans are potentially exposed to numerous pollutants through environmental and occupational exposures. Exposure in adults and older children occur via three main routes: inhalation, ingestion, and dermal contact. Exposure in pregnant women may expose the developing fetus via the trans-placental route and breast-feeding infants may be exposed via breast milk. Exposure assessment of pollutants in environmental and occupational settings can be performed by characterizing environmental concentrations in different environments and subsequently assessing environmental and/or occupational exposures by considering the lifestyle and working patterns of individuals, such as time spent in microenvironments or working scenarios. The body burden resulting from environmental and occupational exposure is determined by various factors, such as the pollutant concentration and timing of exposure, as well as individual factors, such as uptake, metabolism, and excretion rates. Human biomonitoring is, by definition, the monitoring of exposure to pollutants and their effects on the body by measuring the concentrations of pollutants or their metabolites in human matrices such as the blood, urine, hair, saliva, and nails. Biomarkers of exposure can be used to assess total exposure, while biomarkers of effect also take an individual’s capacity to metabolize toxicants. Human biomonitoring data directly reflect the total body burden or biological effects resulting from all routes of exposure and inter-individual variability in exposure levels, metabolism, and excretion rates. These biomarkers have been widely used as a reliable complementary approach for characterizing pollutant exposure in environmental and occupational contexts. In addition, human biomonitoring can help assess the possible adverse health effects attributable to environmental and occupational exposures by employing markers of health effects, such as oxidative stress and DNA damage, which are important in developing adverse health endpoints, such as cardiovascular disease, pulmonary impairments, and cancer initiation and development. The present Special Issue, entitled “Biomarkers of Oxidative Stress from Environmental and Occupational Exposure: Implications for Health Risk Assessment”, focuses on biomarker discovery in oxidative stress resulting from environmental and occupational exposure using a human biomonitoring approach.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

1) Exploration of biomarkers for assessing oxidative stress attributable to environmental or occupational exposure;

2) Assessment of oxidative stress in vulnerable populations such as children and pregnant women;

3) Assessing susceptibility to oxidative stress at the individual or population level;

4) Investigating the associations between internal dose and environmental exposure and the relevant exposure pathways resulting in oxidative stress;

5) Analytical and methodological advances in assessing oxidative stress caused by environmental and occupational exposure.

We cordially invite all researchers to submit their submissions (i.e., original research papers, review articles, highlights, and commentaries) for publication in this Special Issue.  

Dr. Ata Rafiee
Prof. Dr. Peter Sly
Dr. Mohammad Hoseini
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Toxics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• biomarkers
• human biomonitoring
• health risk assessment
• oxidative stress