Elucidating Aluminium's Exposome

The term exposome has been coined to express the totality of environmental or an environmental exposure (Wild, C.P. Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev., 2005 14, 1847-1850). The biologically non-essential and environmentally ubiquitous element aluminium is arguably the most significant metal toxicant in the lithosphere and it is imperative that its exposome is as fully understood as possible. Identifying the tools required to elucidate and illuminate aluminium’s exposome is critical and will help to design and implement current and future experimentation for testing the toxicity of aluminium. It is acknowledged herein that attempts to date to understand the toxicity of aluminium have sometimes suffered from poor experimental design and method but progress has also been stymied by a lack of adequate tools including appropriate computational models. The recent development of a biologically-relevant model of non-equilibrium metal binding should act as a platform for a better understanding of aluminium's exposome.