Pollution and subcellular effects  – the connection to non-communicable diseases

Report, 2025

Air pollution is a large environmental risk factor for adverse health effects and approximately 99% of the world's population breathes air that contains high levels of pollutants, leading to 6.8 million premature deaths annually. Common sources of ambient air pollutants include both natural and anthropogenic emissions, the latter being caused by fossil fuel combustion, industrial activities, agriculture, and mining, amongst other sources. One of the main air pollutant constituents is particulate matter (PM), which is a diverse mixture of liquid and solid particles suspended in air, consisting of e.g. sulfates, nitrates, organic compounds and metals.  Here we use ToF-SIMS, combined with MCR-ALS, ias a viable option in distinguishing and characterizing in situ collected, chemically complex BWP interactions with epithelial cells. Tyre and road wear Particles from HD truck was sampled on-road and size-separated using impactor, SEM-EDX data was interpreted using MVA to model the differences between PM1 and PM2.5 with similar model performance for EDX and ToF-SIMS. The methodology used is hoped to allow a better understanding of the mechanisms by which air pollutants affect human health, which ultimately could act as basis for more effective legislation and regulation of particle emissions.