Home ยป Society ยป Sociology and political science ยป Exposome and social sciences: the promise of a meeting? The concept of exposure aims to identify the complex causes of chronic diseases related to the environment. It builds on knowledge that has been well established in epidemiology for at least forty years, potentially creating a bridge between disciplines interested in environmental health medicine, biomedical sciences, epidemiology, social sciences.
This text proposes to see how, under the banner of the exposome, we can envisage intensified collaborations between all these disciplines that question socio-environmental determinants, and how the implementation of these collaborative works can still prove difficult today.
The contribution of the social sciences to environment-related health issues still faces the relative closure of the approach and methods developed by the biomedical sciences, and by epidemiology in particular. Conversely, social scientists themselves may be reluctant to work in tandem with sciences that do not study social relations as such, and systematically quantify and individualize the phenomena they observe.
The potential for interdisciplinary collaboration in exposures requires the design of research programmes covering a broad spectrum of approaches and methods, from the measurement of biomarkers by molecular biology to an ethnographic study of living and working conditions. The third National Health and Environment Plan PNSE3, highlighted the concept of exposure as a key to understanding the complexity of exposures to pathogens responsible for many chronic diseases.
Article 1 of Act No. Borrowed from epidemiology, the notion of exposome was first proposed in by Christopher P. Wild [2] who has been involved for a long time in research on the environmental aspects of carcinogenesis. The notion of exposome โ which presents a hermetic technical approach โ is therefore included in a major law reforming the health system of President Holland. This article proposes: a to explain the notion of exposome from a historical perspective; b to place the exposome within a broad disciplinary framework that includes epidemiology [3] , biomedical sciences and social sciences.
