Inter-individual susceptibility to environmental toxicants--a
current assessment. Department of Environmental Health, Center
for Environmental Genetics, University of Cincinnati Medical
Center, P.O. Box 670056, Cincinnati, OH 45267-0056, USA.
email@example.com Virtually all diseases have an environmental
component. The two most important factors affecting your unique
risk of an environmental disease (toxicity or cancer) are (a)
your exposure to the environmental agent and (b) your genes.
Epidemiologists have found ways to calculate inter-individual
risk--if the exposure to environmental agents is sufficiently
high and can be documented (e.g., years of cigarette smoking,
taking prescribed drugs, drinking alcohol, or exposure to radon
or other radioactive material, etc.). If the dose of
environmental agents is lower and more ambiguous (e.g., exposure
to chemicals on the job, herbicides sprayed on a golf course,
outdoor or indoor air pollution, endocrine disruptors in cans of
food, living near a toxic waste dump