Assessing external exposure in a large European survey of children and their parents

The Health and Environment-wide Associations based on Large population Surveys (www.HEALS-eu.eu) project, aims to develop a methodology to collect data on internal and external exposure within an exposome paradigm and to relate this to health information. External exposure will be estimated for a wide range of a priori defined agents using a combination of environmental measurements and exposure models. The core personal information comprises location and activity, which can be obtained from small unobtrusive sensors. Data on environmental levels of various hazards obtained from sources such as fixed location sensors, area monitors, and environmental models will be combined with location/activity information to provide estimates of personal exposure. We plan to explore the use agent-based modelling (ABM) to fill gaps in the data. This poster will set out the general methodology being used in HEALS for external exposure and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the approach.