Human biomonitoring (HBM) as a tool for occupational exposure assessment has been reviewed, with a specific focus on pesticides. A systematic literature review (SLR) of available information on HBM of pesticides (or their metabolites) in occupational settings and from HBM studies/surveillance programmes has been carried out and the studies identified assessed for relevance and quality. HBM essentially involves the quantification of either a substance, one of its metabolites, or a surrogate marker of its effects in a biological sample obtained from a person who may have undergone an exposure. Thus, HBM is generally considered to be an estimate of exposure, rather than a measure of health. Over the past 10 to 20 years there has been an expansion in the use of HBM, especially into the field of environmental and consumer exposure analysis, and it is currently well-developed and widely used in both the occupational and environmental settings worldwide. As with any tool, HBM has its strengths and weaknesses and appreciation of these promotes the development of approaches to minimise their effects. Although HBM has been extensively used for monitoring worker exposure to a variety of pesticides, epidemiological studies of occupational pesticide use were seen to be limited by inadequate or retrospective exposure information. Very limited data was identified examining seasonal exposures and the impact of PPE, and many of the studies used HBM to assess only one or two specific compounds. A wide variety of exposure models are currently employed for health risk assessments and biomarkers are often used to evaluate exposure estimates predicted by a model. From the 178 publications identified to be of relevance, 41 individual studies included herbicides, 79 individual studies included insecticides, and 20 individual studies included fungicides. Remaining studies related to mixtures or non-specific biomarkers for groups of pesticides. Although a number of current limitations were identified, there is evidence within the literature for a potential role of HBM in occupational health and safety strategies, as both a tool for refined exposure assessment in epidemiology studies and to contribute to the evaluation of potential health risks from occupational exposure to pesticides. Some key issues were considered that would need to be overcome to enable implementation of HBM as part of the occupational health surveillance for pesticides in Europe. These included issues around priorities for the development of new specific and sensitive biomarkers, the derivation and adoption of health-based guidance values, development of QA schemes to validate inter-laboratory measurements, good practice in field work and questionnaire design, consideration of the extended use of biobanking and the use of HBM for post-approval monitoring of pesticide safety.

We provide a narrative review on published peer-reviewed scientific literature reporting comparisons of personal samplers in workplace settings published between 2004 and 2020. Search terms were developed for Web of Science and PubMed bibliographic databases. The retrieved studies were then screened for relevance, with those studies meeting the inclusion criteria being taken forward to data extraction (22 studies). The inhalable fraction was the most common fraction assessed with the IOM sampler being the most studied sampler. The most common workplace environment where samplers had been compared was that where metals/metalloids were present. The requirements of EN13205 standard (Workplace exposure. Assessment of sampler performance for measurement of airborne particle concentrations) have also been considered, with these requirements not currently being met, or at least referred to, in the included published literature. A number of conclusions have been drawn from this narrative review. For studies that reported correction factors, no discernible trends could be identified. Correction factors also varied between samplers and settings, with correction factors varying from 0.67 for Button/IOM in agriculture settings to a correction factor of 4.2 for the closed face cassette/IOM samplers in aluminium smelters. The need for more detailed and informative data sharing from authors is highlighted, providing more context to both the sampling strategy and methodology, as well as the data analysis. It is recommended that the requirements of EN13205 are taken into account when designing sampler comparison studies at the workplace and that these are also reported. It is also considered that there is a need for a clear standardized workplace sampler comparison protocol to be developed, which can be used by the research and occupational hygiene community to allow more robust and transparent assessment of aerosol samplers and better-quality evidence for use by industrial hygienists, epidemiologists, and occupational safety specialists alike.

We provide a narrative review on the published peer-reviewed scientific literature reporting sampler efficiency, performance and comparison studies (where two or more samplers have been assessed) in laboratory settings published between 1994 and 2021 (27 year period). This review is a follow-up to our narrative review on the published peer-reviewed scientific literature reporting sampler comparison in workplace settings. Search terms were developed for Web of Science and PubMed bibliographic databases. The retrieved articles were then screened for relevance, with those studies meeting the inclusion criteria being taken forward to data extraction (25 studies). The most common fraction assessed has been the inhalable fraction, with the IOM sampler being the most studied inhalable sampler and the SKC Aluminium cyclone being the most studied respirable sampler from the identified relevant articles. The most common aerosol used has been aluminium oxide. It was evident that standardisation for these sampler performance experiments is lacking. It was not possible to identify any discernible trends for the performance of samplers when assessed with different aerosols. The need for more detailed and informative data sharing from authors is highlighted. This includes provision of clear identifiable information on the samplers used for testing, sampler flow rates (both manufacturer and those actually used in the study, with an explanation given of any differences), detailed information on the test aerosols used and the sampler substrate materials used. An identified gap in the literature is the potential to perform studies aimed at revaluating the performance of samplers to allow any longer-term temporal changes in performance to be assessed. One approach in advancing the field is to produce an updated protocol for the laboratory testing of samplers. This updated protocol would be beneficial for both the research and occupational hygiene community and would allow harmonised assessment and reporting of sampler comparison studies.

To enable the hazard identification and characterisation in the risk assessment for humans related to the seventeen 2,3,7,8‐substituted dioxins (PCCDs) and furans (PCDFs) and the twelve dioxin‐like polychlorinated biphenyls (DL‐PCBs), EFSA outsourced an extensive literature search (ELS), followed by selection for relevance and extraction of relevant data for consideration in the risk assessment. Two tailored search strategies for Web of Science (WoS) and PubMed for identifying relevant human studies were developed in discussion with EFSA and used to carry out two ELSs. The outcome of the ELSs were exported into EndNote files, with a total of 4,549 studies identified in WoS and a total of 3,677 studies identified in PubMed. The EndNote files were combined and duplicates were removed, which left 6,699 studies in total. The combined EndNote file was imported into DistillerSR®, the duplication detection tool in DistillerSR® was used and additional 598 duplicates were identified and moved to quarantine in DistillerSR®. Level 1 and Level 2 relevance templates were created in DistillerSR® using the eligibility criteria (inclusion/exclusion criteria) provided by EFSA in the Technical Specifications and these were discussed with EFSA. Following the discussions and a relevance pilot test the remaining 6,101 studies were checked for relevance. When the selection for relevance had been complete, 257 studies proceeded to Level 3 data extraction. The data extraction templates were created in DistillerSR® using the criteria provided by EFSA. Following discussions with EFSA and a data extraction pilot test, the project team performed the data extraction on these studies with the relevant information added to the data extraction forms in DistillerSR

The use of control banding tools to aid in diminishing risks to nanomaterial exposure play an important part in early-stage risk assessment. With the inclusive nature of these tools, comes a certain amount of uncertainty with their findings, and uncertainty evaluation is an aspect which has scope for improvement in the current tools. The European Chemicals Agency provide three types of uncertainty to be assessed for chemical safety: Model uncertainty which relates to simplifications the model makes, Parameter uncertainty which relates to individual model parameters and Scenario uncertainty which is user dependent. To define possible improvements, the SAbyNA project has made investigations into Parameter uncertainty, and have used the Theory of Scales of Measurement, developed by Stevens. The identification of the measurement scale leads to the understanding of the permissible statistics (e.g., standard deviation) that can be performed with the data. To facilitate the assessment of the scale and the statistics, a check list was produced. Several control banding tools were analysed, and these tools employ ordinal scoring scales, which means that calculating average values and confidence intervals is not permissible. As evaluating the uncertainty in results greatly helps the exposure assessment, because it would describe the “quality” of the data and allow definitive comparisons among each other, it is recommended to improve the quantitative exposure estimation through sampling methods to get more measurements, which are beneficial for the uncertainty evaluation and for which the uncertainty can be evaluated according to the Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement.