The role of human biological monitoring in health risk assessment

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.