The role of human biological monitoring in health risk assessment

Abstract

Human biological monitoring refers to the measurement of biomarkers in biological specimens. Advances in analytical chemistry together with an increased understanding of the potential toxicity of environmental chemicals have propelled the quest to identify and monitor chemicals and metabolites in human biological specimens. Many biomonitoring programs have provided valuable data on the presence of environmental chemicals in biological matrices. The availability of this large volume of biomonitoring data has increased the need to understand this information with respect to potential human health risks. This review summarises approaches for interpreting biomonitoring data in the context of population health and risk assessment. Moreover, the advantages and limitations of human biomonitoring approaches, major challenges in the interpretation of HBM data and the utility of human biomonitoring data in health risk assessment context are presented. Several knowledge gaps to improve the ability to interpret human biomonitoring data are discussed.

Human Biomonitoring of Mycotoxins in Blood, Plasma and Serum in Recent Years: A Review

“…Duarte et al (2011) [40] suggested that a good biomarker should be quantitative, sensitive, non-invasive, specific, and easily measurable, and that it should relate to the biochemical mechanism and work at realistic doses. However, it must be noted that the correlation between any biomarker in a body fluid or tissue and exposure depends on the type of matrix sampled, the time between exposure and sampling, the pharmacokinetics of the mycotoxin and the detection capacity of the analytical method used to quantify the biomarker [29]. The appropriate selection of representative biomarkers to be analyzed for each mycotoxin is crucial.…”

“…In this context, human biological monitoring (HBM)-that is, the analysis of mycotoxin biomarkers in body fluids and tissues [29] (internal exposure)-represents a more effective strategy for investigating human exposure [30,31] than the evaluation of food contamination [32], although the two approaches are complementary to each other. The advantage of estimating exposure through mycotoxin levels in biological matrices is that identification of the contamination source involved (ingestion of contaminated food or inhalation of contaminated air) is not necessary.…”

Concordance between sites of tumor development in humans and in experimental animals for 111 agents that are carcinogenic to humans

“…In the future, enhanced exposure assessment methodologies may serve to strengthen the ability of epidemiological investigations to identify Group 1 agents (Cohen-Hubal et al, 2010;National Research Council 2012). Biomarkers of exposure are expected to play an important part in the future of exposure science (Gurusankar et al 2017).…”

Upotreba biološkog monitoringa u cilju zaštite životne sredine

“…In many exposure scenarios, the exposure occurs through different routes of exposure, such as inhalation, dermal exposure, ingestion, or even pre-natal exposure in children. The most valuable fact about human biological monitoring is exactly that -it reflects exposures and disposition, considering absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination (ADME) from all exposure routes, and is indicative of exposure really occurring [6]. If a biomarker is an indicator of exposure, it is called exposure biomarker.…”