Bio: Dr. Xiaoming Shi is a Professor, Deputy Director-General, and Doctoral Supervisor at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC). Dr. Shi’s primary research focuses on environmental and geriatric health epidemiology, having led more than 10 national-level research projects. He organized and implemented the China National Human Biomonitoring Program (CNHBM) and spearheaded the establishment of the Healthy Ageing and Biomarkers Cohort Study (HABCS). He established a technical framework for assessing human exposure to environmental chemicals in China, identifying the exposure profiles and health risks of over 300 pollutants among the Chinese population. His major research findings have been published in prestigious international journals, including the BMJ, Nature Aging, Lancet Public Health, Lancet Healthy Longevity, Environmental Health Perspectives, and European Heart Journal. He has led the formulation and revision of three national standards, including those for drinking water hygiene and indoor air quality. Dr. Shi has been appointed as a member of the National Climate Change Expert Committee, the National New Pollutant Governance Expert Committee, and the Chair of the Environmental Health Branch and the Vice Chair of the Epidemiology Branch at the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Biomedical and Environmental Sciences, and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of both National Medical Journal of China and Chinese Journal of Epidemiology.

Abstract: As global environmental health monitoring enters a new era of exposomics, China established the National Human Biomonitoring Program (CNHBM) in 2017–2018, using a nationally representative probability-proportional-to-size (PPS) sampling approach. This program covered 456 surveillance units across 152 counties and districts, enrolling over 20,000 participants aged 3 to 79 years. Following the initial investigation, two additional biomonitoring campaigns were conducted in 2020–2021 and 2023–2024. More than 300 environmental chemicals across 19 categories, including priority metals/metalloids, perfluorinated compounds, and flame retardants, were systematically quantified. Using the exposomics framework, the etiology and pathogenesis of cardiovascular and metabolic outcomes associated with exposure to these chemicals were explored. This marked the first integration of human biomonitoring with prospective cohort studies, covering the entire life cycle of the population, exposure profiles of traditional and emerging pollutants, signatures of multiple biomarkers, and adverse outcomes of disease incidence and mortality. Additionally, based on the Biomarkers of Air Pollutant Exposure in Chinese Elderly (China BAPE) project, a research strategy integrating exposomics and multiomics was employed to elucidate the associations between exposure to environmental chemicals, such as organophosphate flame retardants and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and glucose-lipid homeostasis in aging populations, as well as their underlying mechanisms. The findings provide mechanistic insights into the environmental drivers of geriatric metabolic epidemic in China, unveiling novel environmental chemical drivers while establishing a risk assessment framework for evidence-based interventions targeting vulnerable aging populations.