Towards Harmonized Biobanking for Biomonitoring: A Comparison of Human Biomonitoring-Related and Clinical Biorepositories

Continental Reference Point: Harmonized Human Biomonitoring across Europe

The Consortium to Perform Human Biomonitoring on a European Scale (COPHES) was launched to collect population-representative data on environmental exposures for the European Union (EU) as a whole. In this issue of EHP, investigators describe results from DEMOCOPHES, the demonstration project that proved the feasibility of a harmonized approach across 17 EU nations. “We have shown that working t...

First Steps toward Harmonized Human Biomonitoring in Europe: Demonstration Project to Perform Human Biomonitoring on a European Scale

BACKGROUND For Europe as a whole, data on internal exposure to environmental chemicals do not yet exist. Characterization of the internal individual chemical environment is expected to enhance understanding of the environmental threats to health. OBJECTIVES We developed and applied a harmonized protocol to collect comparable human biomonitoring data all over Europe. METHODS In 17 European c...

Human Biomonitoring in Switzerland

In her Postulate of 20 March 2008, National Councillor Moser (Green Liberal, Canton Zurich) requested the Federal Council to consider the introduction of systematic analysis of various groups of chemicals (pesticides, PCBs, UV filters, etc.) to which the Swiss population is exposed. In its response of 6 June 2008, the Federal Council stated that it was prepared to investigate how existing resea...

Biomonitoring of 1,3-butadiene and related compounds.

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments list several volatile organic chemicals as hazardous air pollutants, including ethylene oxide, butadiene, styrene, and acrylonitrile. The toxicology of many of these compounds shares several common elements such as carcinogenicity in laboratory animals, genotoxicity of the epoxide intermediates, involvement of cytochrome P450 for metabolic activation (except et...

Setting a Baseline for Biomonitoring