Saliva as a Monitoring Medium for Chemicals

Assessment of Exposure for Pesticide Handlers in Agricultural, Residential and Institutional Environments

“…Saliva has recently been explored as a practical medium for monitoring exposures to a few environmental chemicals, including pesticides (Nigg and Wade, 1992). Carbaryl concentrations in saliva were found to parallel those in plasma after gavage administration in rats, thus suggesting that saliva may be suitable for monitoring carbaryl exposure (Skalasky et al, 1979).…”

Chronic agricultural chemical exposure among migrant and seasonal farmworkers

“…For farmworkers exposed to multiple chemicals on multiple crops, there is no single biomarker in urine that can be measured. Recently, there has been considerable interest in developing salivary measures of exposure because of the relative ease of collecting samples and the expectation that salivary levels will approximate tissue levels (Nigg and Wade 1992). At present, these, too, can measure single chemicals only.…”

Computational strategy for quantifying human pesticide exposure based upon a saliva measurement

“…Direct measurement of chemical exposures using personal monitoring provides the most accurate estimation of a subject’s true exposure ( Nieuwenhuijsen et al, 2006 ). In this context, biomonitoring is a critical tool for quantitatively evaluating exposure from both environmental and occupational settings to a wide range of pollutants, including pesticides ( Borzelleca and Skalsky, 1980 ; Nigg and Wade, 1992 ; Friberg and Elinder, 1993 ; Christensen, 1995 ; Angerer et al, 2006 , 2007 ; Barr et al, 2006 ). Non-invasive methods have also been advocated for quantifying the pharmacokinetics and bioavailability of drugs and xenobiotics, and the use of saliva has been suggested as an ideal body fluid that can be substituted for blood in biomonitoring ( Pichini et al, 1996 ; Timchalk et al, 2004 ; Timchalk et al, 2007b ).…”

“…Non-invasive methods have also been advocated for quantifying the pharmacokinetics and bioavailability of drugs and xenobiotics, and the use of saliva has been suggested as an ideal body fluid that can be substituted for blood in biomonitoring ( Pichini et al, 1996 ; Timchalk et al, 2004 ; Timchalk et al, 2007b ). In this regard, a broad range of drugs, organic chemicals, metals, and pesticides are readily secreted in saliva ( Borzelleca and Skalsky, 1980 ; Drobitch and Svensson, 1992 ; Nigg and Wade, 1992 ; Lu et al, 1997 , 1998 ; Silva et al, 2005 ). For many of these xenobiotics, saliva concentration readily correlates with blood concentration; hence, it is feasible to utilize pharmacokinetic models to accurately estimate systemic dose based upon a saliva measurement.…”