Applying research to public health questions: timing and the environmentally relevant dose.

摘要

The mission of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is to improve the health of the American people by understanding the role of environmental exposures in disease and dysfunction. We accomplish this mission by conducting and funding research-including in vitro, animal, and human studies-on the health effects of environmental agents. Our goal is to prevent disease by identifying and reducing exposures to environmental agents that compromise health. It is clear that every complex disease has both an environmental and a genetic component. Thus, NIEHS-sponsored research must play an important role in understanding disease etiology. In the last few years there have been workshops (Melnick et al. 2002; vom Saal et al. 2007), manuscripts (Myers et al. 2009a, 2009b), and even society-position papers (The Endocrine Society 2009) indicating that increased use of environmental health science data by policy makers should lead to reductions in the human burden of disease.