As architects and designers, it is important we understand how the material choices we make can lead to environmental toxic exposures. Healthy Materials Lab is pleased to invite Dr. Robert Wright, Director of the Mount Sinai Institute of Exposomic Research, for a conversation about the toxic chemical exposures people may encounter in the built environment. This is a bigger issue than we all may realize.

The Mount Sinai Institute of Exposomic Research is developing a range of new techniques to measure environmental toxic exposure and its effects on human health. In the past, it has been very complicated to identify the toxic impact of chemicals on people—testing would happen over multiple years, and it would be difficult to make timely medical interventions or conduct environmental remediation.

Now, not only can the causes of diseases be identified more quickly, but it is also possible for doctors to respond to and maintain human health over time. Today it is also possible to make environmental interventions to remediate or remove toxic sources. Exposure to environmental toxics like lead is often disproportionality higher in neighborhoods with a history of racist housing policies such as redlining and in areas where public and affordable housing is underfunded and undermaintained. Addressing and redressing the source of environmental pollutants is a way to achieve both environmental and racial justice.

Dr Robert Wright is the Ethel H Wise Chair of Environmental Medicine at Mount Sinai and has a transdisciplinary background in pediatrics, toxicology, genetics and environmental epidemiology. He established the Mount Sinai Institute for Exposomic Research in 2017 and is a leading physician advocate of incorporating exposomics into precision medicine and public health. He directs the Mount Sinai Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource Targeted Lab Hub. His research seeks to link exposomics and phenomics with life stage, employing data science to address complex problems in human health and disease research.