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California California’s biomonitoring program also known as the California Environmental Contaminant Biomonitoring Program (CECBP) is a collaborative effort of three departments in two California State agencies:
The purpose of the CECBP is to:
The Scientific Guidance Panel (SGP), a panel of expert scientists from outside of state government, plays a major role in the California Biomonitoring Program. The SGP makes recommendations regarding the program’s design and implementation. This includes making specific recommendations regarding chemicals that are priorities for biomonitoring in California. The panel also provides scientific peer review for the California Biomonitoring Program. At meetings that are open to the public, regular updates are provided to the public about the program. For more details about the program, please visit the OEHHA website. Minnesota In April 2011, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) published a Report to the Minnesota Legislature which includes the results of the Minnesota biomonitoring program established in July 2007. The MDH in cooperation with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, collects, integrates, analyzes and disseminates data to track how much people in Minnesota are exposed to chemicals in the environment. The biomonitoring program is made up of four pilot projects:
“With four pilot projects completed or nearing completion, Minnesota has built the knowledge, skills and relationships necessary for implementing an ongoing state biomonitoring program. Limited resources require MDH to focus next on prioritizing and recommending specific target populations and target chemicals to be included in future biomonitoring efforts. Planning efforts will also identify available resources, partnerships and funding sources for maintaining the capacity that has been created so that MDH will be prepared to respond to the future needs of Minnesota communities.” Maryland House Bill 181, introduced in the Maryland legislature required the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH), in consultation with the Department of the Environment, to conduct a study on the feasibility of establishing a biomonitoring program in the State. The bill also requires DHMH to make a report on feasibility back to the House Health and Government Operations Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. On April 1, 2011 a feasibility symposium was held in Maryland with the purpose of capturing stakeholder input and some common language for inclusion in the report. The symposium featured presentations on how biomonitoring is conducted, pros and cons, benefits and costs, and included breakout sessions where public input was encouraged. Comments from the day’s activities will be incorporated into a report to the state legislature on the feasibility of such a program for Maryland.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) conducts the National Biomonitoring Program (NBP) as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a program of studies designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States. On an ongoing basis, the NBP measures the levels of several environmental chemicals or their metabolites in human samples such as urine, blood, serum, breast milk, and meconium. The results are published in CDC's National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals and for many of these chemicals; CDC produces population-based exposure levels categorized by age, sex, race or ethnicity. Public health officials can use the data to:
Chemicals included in the National Exposure Reports have been selected based on: scientific data that suggested exposure to the U.S. population; the seriousness of health effects known or thought to result from some levels of exposure; the need to assess the efficacy of public health actions to reduce exposure to a chemical; the availability of an analytical method that is accurate, precise, sensitive, specific, and rapid; the availability of adequate blood or urine samples from the NHANES survey; and the analytical cost to perform the analysis. More information is available at http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/
COPHES - Consortium to Perform Human Biomonitoring on a European Scale In December 2009 COPHES began working towards a European Union human biomonitoring framework. COPHES aims to harmonize national and local activities on human biomonitoring to contribute to better data comparability and to coordinate biomonitoring programs across the European Union. COPHES is accompanied by a pilot study called DEMOCOPHES, which started in September 2010. DEMOCOPHES aims to test the feasibility of a coherent approach to biomonitoring in Europe and works in close collaboration with COPHES. The DEMOCOPHES pilot study will look at biomarkers for mercury, cadmium, phthalates as well as environmental tobacco smoke in human hair and urine. The project will collect samples and data from 120 mother-child pairs in each participating country. The first COPHES/ DEMOCOPHES newsletter aims to provide updates on the work and progress of these two projects as well as provide news and information in the area of human biomonitoring in Europe.
Canada The Canadian Health Measures Survey collects key information relevant to the health of Canadians in the form of direct physical measurements such as blood pressure, height and weight, blood and urine sampling and physical fitness testing. Also, through questionnaires, it gathers information related to nutrition, smoking habits, alcohol use, medical history, current health status, lifestyle etc., as well as demographic and socioeconomic variables. Health Canada's Report on Human Biomonitoring of Environmental Chemicals in Canada presents the first-ever comprehensive set of biomonitoring data on the Canadian population's exposure to environmental chemicals, collected as part of the Canadian Health Measures Survey. The Report provides information to scientists and decision makers on the levels of chemical substances in Canadians. These baseline measures are an important starting point for future monitoring and research related to chemical exposure.
Germany The Human Biomonitoring Commission of the German Federal Environment Agency was established to develop scientifically based criteria for the interpretation of human biomonitoring (HBM). Following the assessment of substances in body fluids, the commission derives two different kinds of guideline values: reference values and HBM values (HBM I and HBM II) HBM I values corresponds to the concentration of a substance in human biological material below which - according to the Commission’s current assessment - adverse health effects are not expected and therefore help to determine whether the level of chemicals detected in biomonitoring studies pose a concern. HBM I values are similar to biomonitoring equivalents. Like biomonitoring equivalents, HBM I values 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. The commission has derived HBM values for chemicals such as lead, mercury and arsenic.
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