VOCs and Bones: My Summer Study

What do garment workers, volatile organic compounds, and bone health have in common? 

I’ve been exploring this question during my summer internship at the Shim Lab, a rheumatology lab at UMass Chan that focuses on bone regulation. We study the balance of osteoblasts, which synthesize bone, and osteoclasts, which degrade and remodel it. Too much bone, and it grows into muscles and joints; too little, and patients face fragile bone with low mass, surrounding conditions like osteopenia and osteoporosis.

But How Do VOCs and the Garment Industry Come In?

Briefly, Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are a class of compounds that we often use as solvents for paints, dyes, and refrigerants. Since they’re volatile, VOCs evaporate at room temperature and normal pressure, where they’re inhaled by surrounding life and accumulate in fat tissue. Recent research is connecting VOC exposure to health effects across the industrial workforce: reports of nausea, headaches, and dizziness in the short term; CNS damage and cancer-causing properties in the long term.

Interacting with paint and dyes all day, garment workers are regularly exposed to VOCs, especially in remote regions of developing countries, where environmental health laws can’t be strongly enforced. From clinical data, we know that garment workers face greater rates of fractures and osteopenia. Historically, we’ve attributed the disparity to Vitamin D deficiencies and repetitive labor, but it doesn’t account for the whole difference: something was missing. 

Searching through FrontiersIn, I found that the VOC chlorobenzene upregulates lung cells’ production of NFKB, a protein transcription factor we see all the time in our bone lab—it clicked. NFKB upregulates the production of osteoclasts, shifting the balance to degrade bone. And since garment workers are exposed to chlorobenzene all day through dyes, VOCs could contribute to the bone health disparity.

I presented the idea to my lab group and PI, and although environmental health research in a bone lab is unconventional, they were enthusiastic. And after two months of researching, I compiled a full set of chlorobenzene’s effects on bone: the results matched my hypothesis.

So, in theory, through their regular exposure to the VOCs in dyes, garment workers face an upregulation in osteoclasts, shifting the balance to bone degradation and predisposing them to bone health diseases. Now, this is just an in-vitro model—we haven’t tested the hypothesis on live mice, let alone a human. For the rest of the summer, I aim to test my study in a bone explant and try preliminary solutions like Vitamin D supplementation and bisphosphonate treatment. 

Once we scale the research to a more representative model, like live mice, there are implications in medicine, the environment, and social justice: physicians can consider a new risk factor for treating patients with low bone mass; government agencies can develop stricter emissions guidelines for chlorobenzene, citing its accumulation and long-term effects; and garment workers exposed to chlorobenzene have a tool to self-advocate. 

Through this summer, I’ve learned the value of interdisciplinary research: a single study can cover multiple areas of science and still contribute substance to each. And even though my research wasn’t directly related to my lab, the group was supportive. Just ask your mentor—they’re more receptive than you think…