Tim Nawrot

At a glance

• Tim Nawrot is a full professor at Hasselt University, where he leads the Environmental Molecular Epidemiology group within the Centre for Environmental Sciences.
• He studies how air pollution and other environmental factors affect our health, starting before birth. To do so he leads the ENVIRONAGE birth cohort, which follows mothers and babies from Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg in Genk.
• In a study of 641 newborns, his team found that babies whose mothers were exposed to more fine particulate matter (PM2.5) during pregnancy had shorter telomeres. Telomeres are the protective ends of chromosomes and serve as a marker of biological ageing.
• In 2019 his group showed in Nature Communications that black carbon particles reach the fetal side of the placenta. A follow-up study in The Lancet Planetary Health also found such particles in cord blood and fetal organs.
• His work turns air quality into a question of healthy ageing from the very start of life.
• For longevity this matters because telomere length at birth partly determines how much buffer a person starts life with.
• Takeaway: when walking, running or cycling, pick a route away from busy roads where you can; exposure to soot is lower there.