Human Biomonitoring Data in Health Risk Assessments Published in Peer-Reviewed Journals between 2016 and 2021: Confronting Reality after a Preliminary Review

Tine Bizjak, Marco Capodiferro, Deepika Deepika, Öykü Dinçkol, Vazha Dzhedzheia, Lorena Lopez-Suarez, Ioannis Petridis, Agneta A. Runkel, Dayna R. Schultz and Branko Kontić
Additional contact information
Tine Bizjak: Department of Environmental Sciences, Jožef Stefan Institute, Jamova Cesta 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Marco Capodiferro: Department of Environmental Chemistry, Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA), Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), Jordi Girona, 18, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
Deepika Deepika: Departament d’ Enginyeria Quimica, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Av. Països Catalans 26, 43007 Tarragona, Spain
Öykü Dinçkol: Department of Physiology and Pharmacology “Vittorio Erspamer”, Sapienza Università di Roma, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
Vazha Dzhedzheia: Environmental Engineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Lorena Lopez-Suarez: Inserm UMR S-1124, Université de Paris, T3S, F-75006 Paris, France
Ioannis Petridis: Environmental Engineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Agneta A. Runkel: Department of Environmental Sciences, Jožef Stefan Institute, Jamova Cesta 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Dayna R. Schultz: Environmental Engineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Branko Kontić: Department of Environmental Sciences, Jožef Stefan Institute, Jamova Cesta 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 6, 1-18

Abstract: Human biomonitoring (HBM) is a rapidly developing field that is emphasized as an important approach for the assessment of health risks. However, its value for health risk assessment (HRA) remains to be clarified. We performed a review of publications concerned with applications of HBM in the assessment of health risks. The selection of publications for this review was limited by the search engines used (only PubMed and Scopus) and a timeframe of the last five years. The review focused on the clarity of 10 HRA elements, which influence the quality of HRA. We show that the usage of HBM data in HRA is limited and unclear. Primarily, the key HRA elements are not consistently applied or followed when using HBM in such assessments, and secondly, there are inconsistencies regarding the understanding of fundamental risk analysis principles and good practices in risk analysis. Our recommendations are as follows: (i) potential usage of HBM data in HRA should not be non-critically overestimated but rather limited and aligned to a specific value for exposure assessment or for the interpretation of health damage; (ii) improvements to HRA approaches, using HBM information or not, are needed and should strictly follow theoretical foundations of risk analysis.

Keywords: review; human biomonitoring; health risk assessment; exposure assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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