Human health is influenced by various factors; these include genetic inheritance, behavioral lifestyle, socioeconomic and environmental conditions, and public access to care and therapies in case of illness, with the support of the national health system. All these factors represent the starting point for the prevention and promotion of a healthy lifestyle. However, it is not yet clear to what extent these factors may actually affect the health of an entire population. The exposures to environmental and occupational factors are several, most of which might be poorly known, contributing to influencing individual health. Personal habits, including diet, smoking, alcohol, and drug consumption, together with unhealthy behaviors, may inevitably lead people to the development of chronic diseases, contributing to increasing aging and decreasing life expectancy. In this article, we highlight the role of susceptibility biomarkers, i.e., the genetic polymorphisms of individuals of different ethnicities, with particular attention to the risk factors in the response to specific exposures of Europeans. Moreover, we discuss the role of precision medicine which is representing a new way of treating and preventing diseases, taking into account the genetic variability of the individual with each own clinical history and lifestyle.

There has been an insurgence of allergic respiratory diseases such as asthma and rhinitis in industrialized countries in the last few decades as a result of the interaction between air pollutants and pollen, which has become a global and dramatic health problem. Air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone, and carbon dioxide affect the physical, chemical and biological properties of pollen such as the pollen content, production, and allergenicity, exacerbating symptoms in vulnerable subjects. When investigating these interactions and their effects, the environmental impact of climate change, weather variables and urbanization should be taken into account as well as the pollen species, type of pollutant, conditions of exposure, and individual susceptibility. Up to 25% of asthma adult cases are work-related, because several categories of workers in different sectors are exposed to aeroallergens and outdoor air pollutants. Thus, in this study, we evaluated the significant impacts of occupational allergies on worker’s health and quality of life. In summary, to assess the effect of interactions between air pollutants and pollen on public and occupational health, all the factors that play a role in this context will be investigated, including environmental factors, individual susceptibility in relation to pollen species, type of pollutants, and conditions of exposure.

Despite the progress made in recent years, reliable modeling of indoor air quality is still far from being obtained. This requires better chemical characterization of the pollutants and airflow physics included in forecasting tools, for which field observations conducted simultaneously indoors and outdoors are essential. The project “Integrated Evaluation of Indoor Particulate Exposure” (VIEPI) aimed at evaluating indoor air quality and exposure to particulate matter (PM) of humans in workplaces. VIEPI ran from February 2016 to December 2019 and included both numerical simulations and field campaigns carried out in universities and research environments located in urban and non-urban sites in the metropolitan area of Rome (Italy). VIEPI focused on the role played by micrometeorology and indoor airflow characteristics in determining indoor PM concentration. Short- and long-term study periods captured diurnal, weekly, and seasonal variability of airflow and PM concentration. Chemical characterization of PM₁₀, including the determination of elements, ions, elemental carbon, organic carbon, and bioaerosol, was also carried out. Large differences in the composition of PM₁₀ were detected between inside and outside as well as between different periods of the day and year. Indoor PM composition was related to the presence of people, to the season, and to the ventilation regime.

Aerobiology, as a scientific discipline, developed during the last century and has been applied to different types of organisms and scenarios. In the context of the Integrated Evaluation of Indoor Particulate Exposure (VIEPI) project, we conducted a bibliometric study of the scientific literature on aerobiology from the last three decades, establishing the recent advances and the critical issues regarding the application of aerobiological methods to occupational settings. The data were collected from Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed. We explored the distribution of the articles in different years and research areas and realized a bibliometric analysis using the CiteSpace software. The results indicated that the number of publications is increasing. The studies related to environmental sciences were the most represented, while the number of occupational studies was more limited. The most common keywords were related to pollen, fungal spores and their relation with phenology, climate change and human health. This article shows that aerobiology is not restricted to the study of pollen and spores, extending the discipline and the application of aerobiological methods to occupational settings, currently under-explored.

Indoor air quality depends on many internal or external factors mutually interacting in a dynamic and complex system, which also includes indoor workplaces, where subjects are exposed to many pollutants, including biocontaminants such as pollen and fungal spores. In this context, the occupants interact actively with their environment through actions, modifying indoor environmental conditions to achieve their own thermal comfort. Actions such as opening/closing doors and windows and turning on/off air conditioning could have effects on workers’ health. The present study explored the contribution of human occupants to pollen and fungal spore levels in indoor workplaces, combining aerobiological, microclimate, and worker monitoring during summer and winter campaigns. We evaluated the overall time spent by the workers in the office, the workers’ actions regarding non-working days and working days, and non-working hours and working hours, during two campaigns of pollen and fungal spore monitoring. Our results showed that the biocontaminant values depend on many mutually interacting factors; hence, the role of all of the factors involved should be investigated. In this regard, aerobiological monitoring should be a valid tool for the management of occupational allergies, providing additional information to improve occupational health protection strategies.

Pollen exposure in occupational settings involves different categories of workers. In this paper the effects of diurnal pollen variations have been evaluated in two sites characterized by different vegetation and urbanization: the suburban site of Tor Vergata (TV) and the rural site of Monte Porzio Catone (MPC). Aerobiological and meteorological monitoring was performed in the two sites during the winter of 2017. The data analysis focuses on the comparison between pollen concentrations observed in relation to meteorological variables. In general, it can be stated that the indoor and outdoor dynamics for MPC and TV are different, with the outdoor concentration of pollen for MPC always higher than for TV, in accordance with significant presence of vegetation. The high nocturnal peaks detected in MPC and completely absent in TV could be caused by the presence of particular conditions of stagnation combined with greater emissions from the pollen sources. Furthermore the higher I/O ratio observed during the working hours in TV compared to MPC could be ascribed to the workers’ behavior. Exposure to pollen can be responsible for several health effects and the knowledge of its level can be useful to improve the evaluation and management of this biological risk.