Fine atmospheric particulate matter (PM2.5) is a major risk for public health, potentially leading to millions of premature deaths per year worldwide. The mechanisms and factors inducing PM2.5 toxicity are still not fully known and contrasting results are obtained when different acellular and cellular in vitro toxicity metrics are compared among themselves or with in vivo toxicity. This leads to major issues in air quality studies and pollution mitigation strategies: the detailed knowledge of the impact of PM2.5 sources on
health effects; the most performant metrics to represent toxicity, especially in urban areas where there are combined effects of several anthropogenic sources.
The aim of the TOX-IN-AIR project is threefold:
1) Investigate how acellular and intracellular toxicity indicators correlate one among the other and with the total and water soluble chemical composition putting in evidence seasonal and site dependencies.
2) Evaluate the contributions of the different natural and anthropogenic sources to the toxicological indicators and the nonlinear interactions among the sources and the toxicity metrics.
3) Develop new combined metrics to better represent the global...