**Acknowledgements**

*The Recent Topics in Genetic Polymorphisms*

carcinogenic substances found in the workplace.

**4. Conclusions**

minimum risk for the three categories of gene polymorphisms is observed in the case of Africans, while South Asians are associated to the highest risk for detoxification and oxidative stress; Europeans show the highest risk in the DNA repair; and East Asians show a high risk in the oxidative stress. According to the following results, it seems that South Asians are associated with a cumulative highest susceptibility risk in comparison to the other populations, while Africans are associated to the lowest risk. The model cited here may represent a useful tool to predict the susceptibility risk associated to the occupational exposure and a potential alternative substituting the genotype screening of workers. However, it is still provisional, and it could be improved considering other ethnicities and including in the analysis a higher number of polymorphic genes involved in the biotransformation of the toxic and

The recent and massive migration of populations of various ethnicities in the European countries and the global climate changes not only are affecting the human social life and behaviors but represent also a serious health and safety concern for the population. Any individual response to the environmental and occupational exposure is dependent on different factors; one of the most important and obvious is related to the personal genetic background characterizing different population groups. However many other exogenous factors such as the individual lifestyle, the smoking habit, the use of drugs, the type of diet and the ubiquitous presence of toxicants are factors affecting the individual genetic heritage. A novel and effective approach to the management of the public health risk is urgently needed. Although the genetic information is correctly used in the occupational risk assessment models, various ethical and social issues may arise when dealing with gene polymorphisms at workplace, particularly when the labour force is heterogeneous. The possible reluctance of immigrants and of local workers to give the consent to the biosample donation, the expenses sustained by the laboratory for the analysis as well as the necessity of approvals by the health unit and the manufacturing company to allow the investigational study do not facilitate the success of the biomonitoring campaign which, if not mandatory as the health surveillance, is still important to assess and quantify the exposure to hazardous substances and the susceptibility risk at workplace. Nonetheless the worker misinterpretation or the miscommunication of genetic susceptibility and vulnerability concepts might be misunderstood and considered as personal weakness or inability to perform a specific job task. This erroneous interpretation of susceptibility should be transferred to the workers in a clear and correct form so as they know the individual variability, regardless of the difference in genetic heritage, is not a negative aspect but should be conceived as a personal trait. The role of genotyping in the occupational exposure, no matter if it is carried out in a laboratory or by a statistical analysis, is to define a susceptibility risk for the investigated ethnic group. This information will be useful to take into account the difference between ethnicities so as to verify the company OELs are safe or need to be adjusted taking into account different susceptibilities. In the absence of blood sample or consent from the worker to donation, the availability of a statistical predictive model, based on the genotype publicly available on web databases, should be necessarily regarded as useful indicator of the probable subject's genotype of the ethnic group to which the individual belongs to. Even though the access to genotyping is not possible, a certain number of advantages might be achieved: reduction of the laboratory costs for the research institute, no need of informed consent from workers and no need of trained staff and

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The authors thank all the colleagues of our institute with whom we collaborated to the biomonitoring investigational studies. No fundings have been used to write this chapter.
