The use of aquatic macroinvertebrates as bio-indicators in water quality studies has increased considerably over the last decade in Costa Rica, and standard biomonitoring methods have now been formulated at the national level. Nevertheless, questions remain about the effectiveness of different methods of sampling freshwater benthic assemblages, and how sampling intensity may influence biomonito...

As part of its ongoing work in biomonitoring, Environment Canada’s Canadian Aquatic Biomonitoring Network (CABIN) program has assembled an expert-verified reference collection of 3864 specimens of 604 species of Canadian freshwater macroinvertebrates. Such collections are a key resource for developing a deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) barcode library to facilitate molecular identification of biomon...

BACKGROUND Within the past 3 years, four major evaluations of bisphenol A (BPA) safety have been undertaken. However, these assessments have arrived at quite different conclusions regarding the safety of BPA at current human exposure levels. OBJECTIVES We compared the reasons provided by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) BPA risk assessment panel for their conclusion that human exposu...

Water quality agencies and scientists are increasingly adopting standardized sampling methodologies because of the challenges associated with interpreting data derived from dissimilar protocols. Here, we compare 13 protocols for monitoring streams from different regions and countries around the globe. Despite the spatially diverse range of countries assessed, many aspects of bioassessment struc...

The effects of pesticides on the general population, largely as a result of dietary exposure, are unclear. Adopting an organic diet appears to be an obvious solution for reducing dietary pesticide exposure and this is supported by biomonitoring studies in children. However, results of research into the effects of organic diets on pesticide exposure are difficult to interpret in light of the man...

BACKGROUND Environmental biomonitoring data provide one way to examine race/ethnicity and income-related exposure disparity and identify potential environmental justice concerns. METHODS We screened U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2001-2008 biomonitoring data for 228 chemicals for race/ethnicity and income-related disparity. We defined six subgroups by race/ethn...

The word biomarker is being used more frequently during the last decade. Currently, a great amount of research is directed to fnd toxicological biomarkers for several different chemical substances, since persons are more exposed now than decades before. For this reason, it is important to perform a biomonitoring of such substances in order to assess the possibility that low quantities could cau...

The environmental distribution of fluorinated organic compounds (FOCs) has been less well described than the other halogenated hydrocarbons such as chlorinated and brominated compounds. This is despite the fact that FOCs have been used in a wide variety of products and applications for more than 50 years. FOCs are resistant to hydrolysis, photolysis, microbial degradation, or metabolism by vert...

Biological Monitoring is a newly published book whose chief aim is to provide an overview on the current knowledge of biological monitoring by evaluating the quality of ecosystems and human health. The book, edited and mostly written by Marcelo Enrique Conti, is composed of seven relatively dense chapters that deal mostly with monitoring ecosystem changes that result from environmental insults....

Insect life stages are known imperfectly in many cases, and classifications are usually based on adult morphology. This is unfortunate as information on other life stages may be useful for biomonitoring. The major impediment to using elmid (Coleoptera) larvae for freshwater biomonitoring is the lack of larval descriptions and illustrations. Reliable molecular protocols may be used to associate ...