multipollutant

Multipollutant is a term used in environmental health and toxicology to describe exposure to multiple pollutants or stressors simultaneously. It recognizes that real-world exposures are not confined to a single chemical but involve complex mixtures, such as airborne pollutants including particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and metals, as well as chemical contaminants in water and food. The multipollutant perspective emphasizes that health effects may arise from interactions among pollutants, which can be additive, synergistic, or antagonistic, and that risk assessment based on single substances may misestimate risk.

Assessing multipollutant exposure requires integrated monitoring data, advanced statistics, and exposure modeling. Methods include mixture analysis, dimension reduction, and models that can identify combined effects, such as weighted quantile sum, quantile g-computation, and Bayesian kernel machine regression. Uncertainties include co-linearity among pollutants, sparse data, and limited toxicological data for mixtures.

Regulatory approaches increasingly incorporate multipollutant considerations to design more effective air quality management and to prioritize pollutant reductions with broader health benefits. This may involve joint standards, ecosystem-based risk management, or multi-pollutant impact assessments.

Epidemiologic and toxicologic studies have linked multipollutant exposures to cardiovascular and respiratory outcomes, adverse birth outcomes, and metabolic effects, though specific mixture effects vary by context and are often pollutant- and dose-dependent.

See also: air pollution, pollutant mixture, mixture toxicology, risk assessment.