PhD Occupational & Environmental Health

Our PhD/MPhil programme enables you to undertake a research project that will provide you with high quality training in Occupational and Environmental Health. 

Our research investigates the relationship between occupational and environmental exposures (e.g. air pollution, radiation, pesticides, carcinogens), the exposome and human health. In addition, we carry out studies to determine the impact of interventions to reduce exposure on the  health of populations  as well as studies of stress and wellbeing and of factors that affect return to work by patients following or during treatment.  These studies are generally highly multidisciplinary, involving epidemiologists and health scientists, statisticians, toxicologists, clinicians, social scientist, molecular scientists, and geneticists. 

Themes of our work and illustrative papers are as follows:

Occupational exposure to chemical, physical and biological agents and risk of adverse health outcomes

Personal exposure to inhalable dust and the specific latex aero-allergen, Hev b6.02, in latex glove manufacturing in Thailand.
Pesticide residue transfer in Thai farmer families: using structural equation modeling to determine exposure pathways.
A refined QSAR model for prediction of chemical asthma hazard.
Environmental exposure and risk of adverse health outcomes

Air pollution exposure and adverse pregnancy outcomes in a large UK birth cohort: use of a novel spatio-temporal modelling technique.
Long-term exposure to PM10 and NO 2 in association with lung volume and airway resistance in the MAAS birth cohort.
Short-term effects of ambient particulates and gaseous pollutants on the incidence of transient ischaemic attack and minor stroke: a case-crossover study.
Biomarkers of occupational and environmental exposures

The nitrosated bile acid DNA lesion O 6 -carboxymethylguanine is a substrate for the human DNA repair protein O 6 -methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase.
L-B-N-methylamino-l-alanine (BMAA) nitrosation generates a cytotoxic DNA damaging alkylating agent: An unexplored mechanism for neurodegenerative disease
Intervention studies to reduce occupational, environmental or indoor exposures on health

Has European Union legislation to reduce exposure to chromate in cement been effective in reducing the incidence of allergic contact dermatitis attributed to chromate in the UK?
Return to work following sickness absence

Reporting and prediction of work-relatedsicknessabsenceby general practitioners.