Human biomonitoring at food authorities

Human biomonitoring (HBM) provides a powerful tool in risk and benefit assessment and policy making both for food safety and nutrition. HBM integrates exposure from all sources, can be used to demonstrate trends, to identify vulnerable groups and emerging risks. Limitations are e.g. that HBM does not provide any information on the source of exposure or how long a chemical has been in the body. There is a need to develop HBM to increase its usefulness in policy making. This report maps HBM studies performed at or initiated by food safety authorities in the Nordic countries and discuss problems and options for further work. Traditionally authorities in the Nordic countries have not been using HBM in their work. The report shows that only few studies have been performed and it differs among the countries. There might be several reasons for this e.g. sampling blood and urine is demanding, there are ethical and privacy issues and analytical costs are high. Also, studies performed at other institutions can be used by the national authorities but such studies are not included in this report. One way forward is cooperation – with researchers and between authorities in different countries. Furthermore, food safety authorities have special responsibilities in cases of emergencies and disasters. In these cases HBM provides a good tool for exposure measurement but cooperation and infrastructure for sampling and handling of samples must be established beforehand.