Research
HSE Science and Research Centre conducts extensive research into
widening the applicability and improving the interpretation of
biological monitoring. Much of this research is conducted for
the Health & Safety Executive but we have also fulfilled
contracts for other Government departments, industry bodies and
directly for private companies. Our research has involved
developing new biomonitoring methods, undertaking surveys in
industry to assess exposure control and developing tools and
frameworks to improve the interpretation and utility of results.
Much of our research is published in the peer-reviewed
scientific literature. An overview of our work can be found
on
ResearchGate.
Public Health
Around the world, biological monitoring is being used in public
health monitoring programmes. The most extensive and
well-known of these is probably the National Health and
Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), run by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention in the United States. In Germany, the Human
Biomonitoring Commission publish environmental biological
monitoring guidance values and population reference ranges to help
interpret results and they have an on-going programme of national
surveys (German Environmental Survey, GerES).
Other national programmes include
Canada and
France.
There has been a European project (COPHES) to develop a human
biomonitoring framework and a feasibility study (DEMOCOPHES)
involved 27 countries in harmonising biomonitoring across
Europe. HSE was involved in the analysis of
samples from the UK; the
Health Protection Agency (now Public Health England) were
the UK partners in the COPHES project. Since then there has been a
further initiative, HBM4EU, in
which HSE participated in several occupational
field surveys.
The World Health Organisation (
WHO) has published a list of ten "chemicals" of major
public health concern, see the list below. HSE
Science and Research Centre has expertise in measuring and
assessing exposure to many of these.
We have been involved in a number of environmental exposure
assessment projects using bioloigcal monitoring. Again, an
overview of our work can be found on
ResearchGate.
UK Biomonitoring Network>
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