Environmental cardiology beyond PM2.5

Over the past two decades, fine particulate matter (PM2.5) has been firmly linked to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Yet cardiovascular risk does not arise from PM2.5 exposure alone. A wide range of environmental factors—ultrafine particles, gaseous copollutants (NO2, O3, SO2), traffic-related mixtures, noise, heat and cold stress, humidity, greenness and blue space, built environment features, light at night, occupational exposures, emerging chemical contaminants, and climate-related extremes—may act independently, jointly, or synergistically to influence cardiovascular structure, function, and events across the life course. Advancing environmental cardiology requires moving beyond single-pollutant paradigms to characterize mixtures, pathways, susceptibility, and interventions in diverse populations and settings.Aims This Research Topic invites contributions that: • Quantify cardiovascular effects of environmental exposures beyond PM2.5, including multipollutant and multi-stressor mixtures.• Elucidate biological mechanisms linking these exposures to atherosclerosis, arrhythmia, heart failure, hypertension, thrombosis, autonomic imbalance, vascular dysfunction, and cardiometabolic pathways.• Identify populations with heightened vulnerability (e.g., by age, sex, comorbidities, pregnancy, occupational groups, socioeconomic context, and structural determinants).• Advance exposure science relevant to cardiovascular risk, including personal sensing, satellite/land-use models, source apportionment, time–activity patterns, and high-resolution exposure reconstruction.• Develop and apply analytical methods for mixtures, high-dimensional confounding, causal inference, effect modification, and mediation in environmental cardiovascular epidemiology.• Assess acute, subacute, and chronic effects across time scales, including lag structures, cumulative burden, and life-course perspectives.• Evaluate structural, community, clinical, and policy interventions that mitigate exposure or vulnerability, with attention to equity and implementation.• Explore the cardiovascular implications of climate variability and change, extreme heat/cold, wildfires and smoke, storms, and power disruptions.Article types We welcome Original Research, Brief Research Reports, Methods, Data Reports, Systematic Reviews, Mini-Reviews, Perspectives, and Policy and Practice articles aligned with Frontiers in Epidemiology guidelines.Topics of interest include, but are not limited to • Ultrafine particles and particle composition; oxidative potential; source-specific exposures (traffic, wildfires, industry).• Gaseous pollutants (NO2, O3, SO2), indoor air quality, and household energy transitions.• Environmental noise, light at night, and circadian disruption.• Urban form, greenspace/blue space, walkability, and transportation systems.• Thermal exposures, heat waves, cold spells, humidity, and cardiovascular stress.• Emerging contaminants (e.g., microplastics, PFAS, metals) and cardiometabolic risk.• Occupational and neighborhood exposures; environmental injustice and structural drivers.• Biomarkers and intermediate phenotypes: inflammation, oxidative stress, endothelial dysfunction, autonomic tone, arrhythmic burden, imaging markers, and omics signatures.• Methodological advances: causal inference for environmental mixtures, high-resolution spatiotemporal modeling, personal wearable data, and integration with electronic health records.By highlighting environmental determinants beyond PM2.5, this collection aims to refine cardiovascular risk attribution, uncover mechanistic pathways, identify actionable leverage points, and inform equitable prevention strategies and policy. The goal is to accelerate translation from exposure assessment to cardiovascular health protection across communities worldwide.We encourage interdisciplinary teams spanning epidemiology, exposure science, cardiology, biostatistics, environmental health, implementation science, urban planning, and policy. Submissions should adhere to Frontiers’ standards for transparency, ethics, data availability, and reproducibility. If you’d like, I can adapt this text to a shorter web blurb and a longer call-for-papers version, and align phrasing with the latest Frontiers style guide. Topic editors: Smart Mbagwu, Aleksandar Cirovic Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/76648/environmental-cardiology-beyond-pm25