Home | About this site / SAC |About EHRF |Contact Us
 

Biomonitoring Equivalents

"The presence of a chemical does not imply disease. The levels or concentrations of the chemical are more important determinants of the relation to disease, when established in appropriate research studies, than the detection or presence of a chemical” (CDC, 2005).

Biomonitoring Equivalents (BEs) help to determine whether the level of chemicals detected in biomonitoring studies pose a concern.  The National Research Council recommended developing these types of biomonitoring guidance values, because the typical guidance values for safe exposures to chemicals derived by regulatory agencies, such as EPA and FDA, are in milligrams of a chemical intake per kilogram body weight per day.  These values do not easily equate to values measured in biomonitoring studies, typically nanograms of a chemical per milliliter urine or blood.  BEs use information about how the body processes a chemical, as well as biological information, such as average daily urine production and the average volume of blood, to translate safe exposure intakes established by regulatory agencies into concentrations in blood or urine.    

To learn more about the BE method and how it’s applied to interpret human biomonitoring results, see www.biomonitoringequivalents.net