REVIEW Open Access Diagnosis, monitoring and prevention of exposure-related non-communicable diseases in the living and working environment: DiMoPEx-project is designed to determine the impacts of environmental exposure on human health Lygia Therese Budnik 1* , Balazs Adam 2 , Maria Albin 3,4 , Barbara Banelli 5 , Xaver Baur 6 , Fiorella Belpoggi 7 , Claudia Bolognesi 8 , Karin Broberg 4 , Per Gustavsson 4 , Thomas Göen 9 , Axel Fischer 10 , Dorota Jarosinska 11 , Fabiana Manservisi 7 , Richard O’Kennedy 12 , Johan Øvrevik 13 , Elizabet Paunovic 11 , Beate Ritz 14 , Paul T. J. Scheepers 15 , Vivi Schlünssen 16,17 , Heidi Schwarzenbach 18 , Per E. Schwarze 13 , Orla Sheils 19 , Torben Sigsgaard 17 , Karel Van Damme 20 and Ludwine Casteleyn 20 Abstract The WHO has ranked environmental hazardous exposures in the living and working environment among the top risk factors for chronic disease mortality. Worldwide, about 40 million people die each year from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) including cancer, diabetes, and chronic cardiovascular, neurological and lung diseases. The exposure to ambient pollution in the living and working environment is exacerbated by individual susceptibilities and lifestyle-driven factors to produce complex and complicated NCD etiologies. Research addressing the links between environmental exposure and disease prevalence is key for prevention of the pandemic increase in NCD morbidity and mortality. However, the long latency, the chronic course of some diseases and the necessity to address cumulative exposures over very long periods does mean that it is often difficult to identify causal environmental exposures. EU-funded COST Action DiMoPEx is developing new concepts for a better understanding of health-environment (including gene-environment) interactions in the etiology of NCDs. The overarching idea is to teach and train scientists and physicians to learn how to include efficient and valid exposure assessments in their research and in their clinical practice in current and future cooperative projects. DiMoPEx partners have identified some of the emerging research needs, which include the lack of evidence-based exposure data and the need for human-equivalent animal models mirroring human lifespan and low-dose cumulative exposures. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach incorporating seven working groups, DiMoPEx will focus on aspects of air pollution with particulate matter including dust and fibers and on exposure to low doses of solvents and sensitizing agents. Biomarkers of early exposure and their associated effects as indicators of disease-derived information will be (Continued on next page) * Correspondence: L.Budnik@uke.de 1 Division of Translational Toxicology and Immunology, Institute for Occupational and Maritime Medicine (ZfAM), University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Hamburg, Germany Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Budnik et al. Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology (2018) 13:6 DOI 10.1186/s12995-018-0186-9