Eva M Andersson to study on inequality in exposure to environmental health with grant from Forte

Eva M Andersson, researcher at Occupational and Environmental Medicine, receives SEK 3.7 million from Forte for a project on socio-economic inequality in exposure to environmental health risks in Sweden. Environmental exposures are risk factors for many diseases, but the relationship between socioeconomics and environmental exposure (air pollution, traffic noise) has rarely been studied. The study is based on the SCAPIS cohort with roughly 30,000 people from six Swedish cities. The researchers will investigate whether there is inequality in the physical environment, so that, for example, residents in “poor” areas are exposed to higher levels of air pollution and more traffic noise. The goal is to estimate what proportion of the social gradient in health can be attributed to exposure from the surrounding environment.