Early detection of risk for diseases using environmental forensics

The project Early detection of risk for diseases using environmental forensics (ED2EF) aims to increase the knowledge of how our health is affected by our environment, with focus on water quality.

The study includes occurrence, distribution, mobility, and fate of elements in regional rock, soils and water and if correlations exist to the regional distribution of diseases.

For successful treatment, it is crucial to detect factors that have an impact on development of disease at an early stage. Elements associated to mining of critical raw material (CRM) will be the target, since few studies have been conducted on these metals geochemical behaviour in natural systems. CRM are used in technical applications, such as vehicle batteries and wind turbines, and as a result, expected to increase in natural system.

Environmental forensics combines historical knowledge and data, with new data of element concentrations and isotopic ratios in rock, soil and water to understand the sources, transport mechanisms and exposure pathways for humans. Environmental forensics will be combined with medical geology in this project, and the study area is Northern Sweden in a first step.

Participating researchers at LTU

• Lena Alakangas - Professor and head of subject in Applied Geochemistry
• Sarah Conrad - Senior lecturer in Applied Geochemistry
• Tobias Bauer - Assosiate Professor in Ore Geology
• Katelyn Murphy - Doctoral student in Applied Geochemistry