Common sensors

In his Bedford Medal Talk at the BOHS Annual Conference in Nottingham in April entitled Get a Life!?  John Cherrie, director of research at the Institute of Occupational Medicine, offered an insight into how developments in technology are enabling better monitoring of occupational exposures which in turn is helping to build a clearer picture of the impact occupational exposures have on an individual’s overall health.

Cherrie reflected that a few years ago it looked as if the charting of the human genome would provide a major new route to understanding disease initiation, but the reality is that genetic factors only contribute about 10% to the mortality rate. What is actually required is a greater knowledge and understanding of the ‘exposome’, which is understood to be every exposure to which an individual is subjected to from conception to death. This includes internal exposures such as to gut microflora, social and psychological influences and crucially, workplace and environmental exposures. Study of
these developments is a component of the HEALS  (Health and
Environment-wide Associations based on Large population Surveys)
project. Sponsored by the European Union this project aims to assess
individual exposure to environmental stressors to help predict health
outcomes. It includes the internal and external components of the
exposome, and one of the stages features conception to death surveys.

Developments in sensor technology and the increasing availability of small and low-cost sensors are opening up greater possibilities in terms of measuring the exposome. These can include internal sensors, reporting things like core temperature, or sensor arrays in cities, as well as wearable sensors based on traditional monitors. The availability of these sensors to the general public is contributing to a rise in what is referred to as Citizen Science (see Box Out).

The potential of the internet and social networking for recording and sharing this data is contributing to a rapid growth in the accumulation of Big Data, a term used to describe large volumes of unstructured and fast moving data. This kind of data is difficult to interrogate using traditional databases but the emergence of Big Data technologies is helping to extract meaning from the data so its value is increasing. 

Cherrie suggests that from an occupational health perspective a number of factors are coming together which will have an impact on the measurement of worker exposure. Some of the emerging low cost sensors are also suitable for monitoring the occupational environment. While they are likely to need calibration for these purposes, and may be less accurate and precise than what has been traditionally used, their wide adoption thanks to their low costs may well compensate for the possibly low quality of individual measurements so they have the potential to provide useful data. Cherrie also explained that advances in Omics sciences relating to methods of measuring the exposome were offering new ways to investigate worker exposure.

Critically, “the Citizen Science revolution is coming,” says Cherrie, and consequently ownership of monitoring and associated data is likely to become much more democratic. Companies must embrace the potential of sensors in the 21st century because: “If you don’t do it, your workers will,” he concludes. 

John Cherrie’s presentation was co-authored by Andrew Apsley and Sean Semple.