Session: Human Biomonitoring Research and Usage

3027.1: Monday, November 8, 2004: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM

Oral

Human Biomonitoring Research and Usage

This session will provide a complete overview of biomonitoring, including the science and significance of biomonitoring, focussing on how biomonitoring data can augment our understanding of human exposure to toxic chemicals. We will examine how such data can impact public health policy and will discuss to what extent biomonitoring can be used to explore potential linkages between toxic chemical substances and health outcomes. Presentations describing current and past biomonitoring studies by the United States Center for Disease Control and by other researchers will provide information about the parameters of biomonitoring study design and implementation. Information about community monitoring and responsible research ethics will be presented.

Learning Objectives: 1. Participants will enhance their understanding about the science of biomonitoring, the identification and measurement of chemical substances within the human body, and learn about the classes of chemicals whose presence can be identified in human biospecimens, what such evidence indicates in terms of pathways and sources of exposures, and how such information can or cannot be used to predict health outcomes for given populations or particularly exposed communities. 2. Participants will learn how a case study combining biomonitoring with another community monitoring technique involving air quality sampling has produced new and provocative information about human exposures to toxic chemicals. Information will be presented to indicate how this information has been incorporated into patient assessment by health professionals within this community. Participants will come to understand the significance of biomonitoring for health professionals and public health officials, and will develop an understanding about how the resulting data has or may influence public health concepts and practices 3. The discussion will include information about appropriate mechanisms for data collection within the context of ethical community research and in this context, will suggest, for example, what physicians need to know in order to discuss data results with individual study participants and with concerned communities and how the complexities of researcher/community interactions can managed through community-based participatory research mthods.. 4. Participants will learn about current governmental biomonitoring programs, featuring recent projects carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and the CDC-supported regional laboratory enhancement laboratory projects, which can provide data to health professionals interested in toxic chemical exposure and the implications for human health and health practices. Participants will learn specifically about biomonitoring study design elements, and will receive information about how such elements can address public health information gaps.

Organizer(s):

Steve L. Heilig, MPH
Polly Hoppin, ScD
Molly Jacobs, MPH
Derek G Shendell, MPH, DEnv
Rebecca A. Head, PhD, DABT

8:30 AM

Biomonitoring: How to do and understand it