human biomonitoring

In 1985, the first German Environmental Survey on Health (GerES) was launched. Since then, this series of surveys has been investigating the exposure of the German population to pollutants. The data are used to inform the public. It also provides an important scientific basis for policy decisions on environment, health, and chemicals. Here’s a timeline of the survey's major milestones.

The "European Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals" (PARC) was developed with the overall aim of improving knowledge about chemical substances in order to better protect human health and the environment. This goal is to be achieved within seven years together with 200 organizations from Europe.

To capture the availability of Human Biomonitoring data in the EU member states and to better understand the health impacts of exposure to harmful substances, the EU Commission funded the project "European Human Biomonitoring Initiative" (HBM4EU) with over 74 million euros within the framework of the "Horizon 2020" funding programme.

A special issue publication "Human Biomonitoring 2016“ has just been published. It features 34 articles which present the current status of human biomonitoring (HBM) worldwide. The volume focuses on the scientific, political strategic, European and global perspectives of HBM. All articles are available open access and online for one year.

The EU Commission is providing funding worth more than 74 million euros to the “European Human Biomonitoring Initiative – HBM4EU” project to harmonize and align the database on human biomonitoring in the EU Member States and to enhance our understanding of the health impact of exposure to pollution. The aim is to consolidate existing data and to implement joint research projects.

Which pollutants are people exposed to nowadays and which have diminished as a result of environmental legislation? This was one of the topics more than 300 experts from 33 countries discussed on the 2nd International Conference on Human Biomonitoring in April 2016 in Berlin. The presentations, the conference proceeding and impressions from the conference are found on the conference website.

DEMOCOPHES is the acronym for a European project to test the feasibility of a human biomonitoring study in 17 European countries by means of common guidelines and using same methods. These guidelines were drawn up in the context of the COPHES project, of which DEMOCOPHES is an integral part. It has now been completed and the first European results delivered.

European environment and health policy attaches great importance to the human biomonitoring (HBM) tool for the determination of the environmental burden on the population. However previous or ongoing HBM studies in several European countries deal with different issues.