For decades, environmental law focused on the visible and the catastrophic: spills, smokestacks, Superfund sites, and enforcement actions after damage was done. Today, a quieter but far more pervasive environmental issue is moving to the center of serious scientific and commercial attention: exposomics.

Businesses should be paying close attention because exposomics reframes environmental risk not as an abstract regulatory concern, but as a measurable driver of human health, workforce productivity, liability exposure, and asset value.

At its core, the exposome describes the totality of environmental exposures an individual experiences over a lifetime and how those exposures affect biology and health.

Exposomics is the science devoted to studying those exposures from conception to death. It complements genetics by examining how chemicals, diet, lifestyle, stress, socioeconomic conditions, infections, radiation, and physical activity interact with our biology to influence disease and in particular, a modern chronic illness epidemic. Using advanced “omics” tools, wearable sensors, and environmental monitoring, exposomics seeks to connect environmental drivers to biological responses, revealing nongenetic causes of disease and opening the door to prevention rather than treatment.

Why should businesses care? Because the long promised revolution of genetics did not fully materialize. The Human Genome Project was supposed to explain disease and unlock cures. Instead, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now acknowledge that genetics accounts for roughly 10 percent of disease, with the remaining causes largely environmental. In other words, what surrounds us, and what we allow into our air, water, food, and buildings, matters far more than what we inherit.

Recent research underscores this point. In a study of nearly half a million people in the United Kingdom, Oxford researchers concluded that environment and lifestyle were ten times more likely than genetics to explain premature death. That finding should be a wake up call for anyone responsible for workplaces, housing, or consumer products.

Consider Parkinson’s disease. It is now the second most common neurological disorder in the United States after Alzheimer’s, with approximately 90,000 new diagnoses each year. Parkinson’s rates have doubled over the past 30 years and are projected to increase another 15 to 35 percent per decade. That is not how inherited genetic diseases behave. The latest research suggests that only 10 to 15 percent of Parkinson’s cases are fully explained by genetics.

As Dr. Ray Dorsey, a neurologist at the University of Rochester, has put it: “The health you enjoy, or don’t enjoy, today is a function of your environment in the past.” That environment includes air pollution, pesticides, PFAS, solvents, and legacy contaminants embedded in buildings and infrastructure. In his book Ending Parkinson’s Disease, Dorsey argues that Parkinson’s is largely an environmental disease, with up to 90 percent of cases linked to chemical exposures, including pesticides and solvents such as trichloroethylene (TCE). If that is correct, Parkinson’s is not inevitable; it is preventable.

TCE is a particularly troubling example. No one knows precisely how much of the world’s drinking water is contaminated, but the CDC estimates that between 4 and 18 percent of Americans are exposed, while the Environmental Working Group places the number at roughly 17 million people. While TCE’s link to cancer is well established, its neurological impacts are still being unraveled.

The pesticide paraquat, strongly associated with Parkinson’s among farmworkers, remains legal in the United States despite being banned in Europe and China. This uneven regulatory landscape does not inspire confidence.

The broader chemical picture is even more concerning. Of the roughly 350,000 chemicals in commerce, only about 1 percent have ever been tested for safety. In more than half a century, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has banned or meaningfully restricted only a dozen or so substances, while the European Union has restricted more than 2,000.

It is easy to mock suburban “MAHA moms” making their own food coloring or refusing to microwave plastic. But their instincts are not irrational. Increasing numbers of Americans, including this author, filter drinking water, run air purifiers, choose fragrance and dye free products, buy organic produce, and avoid heating food in plastic. They are responding to uncertainty in U.S. commerce that has not kept pace with modern science. Who thinks it is a good idea to use artificial food dyes in children’s breakfast cereal that are synthetic chemicals derived from petroleum?

Autism offers another sobering data point. Diagnoses have increased from approximately 1 in 10,000 children in the 1970s to 1 in 36 today. Genetics and improved screening do not fully explain that rise, according to experts such as Johns Hopkins toxicologist Thomas Hartung.

Since the 1990s, more than 75 percent of American adults live with at least one chronic disease, including autoimmune disorders, insulin resistance, and neurodevelopmental conditions. Hartung estimates that only five percent of disease is purely genetic, and fewer than 40 percent have any meaningful genetic component at all.

This is where exposomics becomes directly relevant to business. It has already gone mainstream in commercial real estate and corporate operations. Tenants increasingly negotiate for purified drinking water and indoor air quality, demanding minimum standards for healthy air, use of low emitting materials, requiring better ventilation and pollutant testing (like formaldehyde, fine particulate matter, and VOCs), and healthy food options,with the aim of better occupant health, productivity, and energy efficiency. These are not fringe demands. They are risk management strategies informed by emergent science and driven by workforce and other stakeholder expectations as well as competitive differentiation.

From an environmental attorney’s perspective, exposomics also foreshadows liability. As science improves our ability to link specific exposures to specific health outcomes, the evidentiary gap that once protected polluters and product manufacturers will narrow. Businesses that proactively reduce exposures, including with green buildings (.. LEED, Green Globes, and the like), will be better positioned than those that wait for regulation or litigation to force change.

Exposomics is not about panic. It is about precision, measuring what we are exposed to, understanding how it affects us, and making informed decisions. For business owners, that means recognizing that environmental health is no longer a populist slogan in a political movement or a public relations exercise. It is a core operational, legal, and financial concern.

Exposomics is the environmental issue you should take seriously because your employees, tenants, customers, and balance sheet already are.

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Join us for the next in our webinar series at the Intersection of Business, Science, and Law, “Exposomics is the Environmental Issue Your Business Should Take Seriously” on Tues, Jan 20 at 9 am. The webinar is complimentary, but you must register here.