Human Biomonitoring of Environmental Chemicals

Human Biomonitoring of ecological Chemicals in Canada

Human Biomonitoring of Environmental Chemicals in Canada

Question 1

Biomonitoring is a very useful exposure assessment device to assess uptake of chemicals. It has been extensively applied in the occupational health setting and has in latest years obtained increasing attention as a means to accurately measure reduced levels of environmental chemicals in human tissue. The use of human tissue to consider environmental exposures is more than an analytical exercise and requires concern of the utility and interpretation of the data as well as due concern of the ethical issues. These two facets are inextricably linked.

 

Scientific Challenges

Aharmonised European human biomonitoring events is necessary and timely.

The aims of the navigate study should be transparent and realistic.

Asound strategy for the understanding of human biomonitoring facts and figures should be developed.

The navigate study should encompass the development of a strategy to integrate health data and environmental supervising data with human biomonitoring data at a national and international level.

Communication strategies should be in place when designing the study and evolve as the study continues.

Early communication with key stakeholders is essential in alignment to achieve maximum efficacy of any principle developments and facilitate subsequent monitoring.

Research should be undertaken in accordance with routinely agreed standards of good practice such as are laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki. These fundamental and broadly accepted ethical principles, largely drawn from from medical practice, are:

Beneficence - 'do affirmative good'

Non-maleficance - 'do no harm'

Informed Consent

Privacy and dignity

 

Question 2

Biomonitoring Equivalents

Interpretation of occupational  biomonitoring  data in  a wellbeing risk  context has  a  substantial history.  A  framework has been lacking, although, for the interpretation of  biomonitoring  data from the general  public's  exposure to environmental chemicals. The notion of the  Biomonitoring Equivalent  (BE) presented in 2007) is an  approach  for using accessible pharmacokinetic facts and figures and ahead dosimetry to calculate levels of biomarkers foreseen to be affiliated with exposures consistent with general community exposure guidance values such as quotation doses (RfDs), negligible  risk  levels (MRLs), and tolerable every day intakes (TDIs) and their inherent toxicological points of departure (PODs) as  a  basis for putting  biomonitoring  data into  a public health risk  context (Fi context (Fig. 1). Hays et al. (2007) identified that BEs in their simplest delineation are  a  basic,  screening  level  approach  for putting  biomonitoring  data into  a health risk  context (Fig. 2).  Screening  can be characterised as the application of simple tools or procedures that can be applied rapidly to delineate populations that may be at some stage of increased  health risk  from those that may not. Depending on conclusion,  screening  procedures need detailed confirmatory follow-up before definitive conclusions can be reached. Along  a  continuum of increasing sophistication (and data requirements), BEs are more sophisticated than generic  screening  criteria analogous to thresholds for toxicological anxiety (TTC).

 

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram showing parallelogram notion for calculating BEs and possible routes for drawing from a BE.

 

Fig. 2. Sophistication continuum of biomonitoring screening and understanding tools.

 

Physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PB-PK) models

Due to the negative impact of anthropogenically-produced pollutants ...