Chemicals in everyday life: our constant companions
Chemicals from the environment are part of our daily lives – on our way to work or school, in our homes or during leisure time, in the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the air we breathe. If we absorb these chemicals in certain quantities, they could be harmful to our health.
For this reason, the German Environment Agency (UBA) has been examining, through the German Environmental Survey (GerES), the exposure of people in Germany to selected chemicals from our environment - so-called environmental pollutants - for 40 years.
How are environmental pollutants studied?
Environmental pollutants can enter the human body through many pathways: via the skin, through breathing, or in the food we eat. The total amount of pollutants absorbed through these pathways can be measured in body fluids such as urine or blood. This method is known as human biomonitoring.
In addition to human biomonitoring, GerES also collects and analyses samples from home environments (e.g. drinking water, house dust, indoor air). Participants in GerES are also asked about their households, living environments, leisure activities, diets, and more. In this way, possible sources of exposure can be identified.
The beginning: heavy metals
In the mid-1980s, the issue of heavy metals in the body became a matter of public concern in Germany. A major scandal involving the “Sonnenschein” battery factory, which had contaminated the ground with lead, attracted significant media and political attention.
This incident gave impetus for the launch of the German Environmental Survey (GerES). With GerES I 1985-86 , the former Institute for Water, Soil, and Air Hygiene (WaBoLu), which has since been partly integrated into today’s UBA, conducted the first study on heavy metal exposure among adults in the former West Germany.
The survey found that large proportions of adults aged 25 to 69 in the Federal Republic of Germany had levels of arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury that exceeded what was considered as safe at the time. Drinking water was also tested in participating households. Some of the samples showed concentrations that exceeded the limits set by the Drinking Water Ordinance. As a result, the ordinance was revised in 2001 to apply the same limit values to water from domestic plumbing – so-called tap water. This was intended to reduce the presence of heavy metals in household drinking water.
GerES II was conducted in the early 1990s. For the first time, data were collected for both the former West German states and the new federal states of the former East Germany. The study included not only adults, but also children living in the household of the participating adults at the time of the study. Among its findings, GerES II revealed that children were more exposed to the heavy metal mercury from dental amalgam fillings than adults. In 1992 it was recommended that amalgam no longer be used in pregnant women, young children or people with kidney disease. Today, the use of dental amalgam is largely banned across the European Union.
At the end of the 1990s, GerES III showed that the exposure to environmental pollutants in the former East and West was becoming increasingly similar - for example, in the case of cadmium, mercury and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
High exposure levels, especially among young people
Between 2003 and 2006, GerES IV studied children and found high levels of exposure to reproductive toxicants – specifically, phthalates, a group of plasticisers. Although levels declined over time, around ten years later, children and adolescents still had excessive concentrations. At the same time, samples collected in 2014 and 2017 for GerES V revealed concerningly high levels of so-called “forever chemicals” – per- and polyfluorinated compounds (PFAS) – in this age group.
Findings such as these have been fed into national and European legislation on chemicals, environmental protection and public health, and continue to inform policy today.
German data integrated at EU level
From the 2000s, human biomonitoring projects became increasingly common in the EU. Owing to Germany’s decades of experience in this field, the UBA took on the leadership of HBM4EU – the largest European human biomonitoring initiative to that date. Thirty countries and various EU agencies participated as partners in this research initiative, which was funded by the European Commission. Key objectives included harmonising biomonitoring data across Europe – that is, collecting comparable data – and using these to inform policymaking. The aim is to improve the effectiveness of chemicals policy and better protect public health across Europe. The EU’s current EU Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC ) is continuing the successful work of HBM4EU. UBA is actively involved in PARC and contributes, among other things, through the German study on environmental health in children and adolescents (ALISE).
New insights expected: GerES VI is collecting data on adults again after 20 years
The last representative data on adults in Germany were collected during GerES III in the late 1990s. GerES VI used a scientific selection process in 2023 and 2024 to select people aged 18 to 79 and invite them to participate in order to collect new data.
Detailed analysis is still ongoing, but the value of the study is already becoming clear: In spring 2024, the representative HBM data and questionnaire responses from GerES VI helped identify sunscreen as the source of a nnbaed plasticiser, which was then identified as a contaminant in a UV filter. UBA will continue to evaluate and publish further findings from GerES VI in due course.
With the Action Programme on Environment and Health (APUG), environmental health monitoring and reporting was identified as a key instrument for recording environmental pollution and its effects on human health. The programme calls for regular HBM studies to track the population’s exposure to harmful environmental substances. The story of GerES, now 40 years in the making, is far from over.
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