Reconstructing Human Exposures Using Biomarkers and other “Clues”

Abstract

Biomonitoring is the process by which biomarkers are measured in human tissues and specimens to evaluate exposures. Given the growing number of population-based biomonitoring surveys, there is now an escalated interest in using biomarker data to reconstruct exposures for supporting risk assessment and risk management. While detection of biomarkers is de facto evidence of exposure and absorption, biomarker data cannot be used to reconstruct exposure unless other information is available to establish the external exposure-biomarker concentration relationship. In this review, the process of using biomarker data and other information to reconstruct human exposures is examined. Information that is essential to the exposure reconstruction process includes (1) the type of biomarker based on its origin (e.g., endogenous vs. exogenous), (2) the purpose/design of the biomonitoring study (e.g., occupational monitoring), (3) exposure information (including product/chemical use scenarios and reasons for expected contact, the physicochemical properties of the chemical and nature of the residues, and likely exposure scenarios), and (4) an understanding of the biological system and mechanisms of clearance. This review also presents the use of exposure modeling, pharmacokinetic modeling, and molecular modeling to assist in integrating these various types of information.

Use of Dried Blood Spots for Estimating Children?s Exposures to Heavy Metals in Epidemiological Research

“…More recently, there has been a shift towards incorporating biomarker data as a more direct link to exogenous exposures through measurements from human biological media such as blood, breath, and urine for exploring the concept of the human exposome-representing all chemical exposures from conception throughout life [3][4][5]. The combined use of biomarkers of exposure and biomarkers of effect has also become a central theme for linking the external environment to potential adverse health outcomes [6][7][8]. There are now large databases such as the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the German Environmental Survey (Ger ES), The Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES), and the Canadian Health Measures Study (CHMS) that are making such data mining readily available to the research community [9][10][11][12].…”

The role of human biological monitoring in health risk assessment

“…For chemicals that have sufficiently known sources and exposure pathways, more elaborate dose-reconstruction scenarios can be formulated using probabilistic models (Lyons et al, 2008;Georgopoulos et al, 2009;Tan et al, 2012).…”

“…It was proposed by Tan and coworkers (Tan et al, 2007) and assumes that the relationship between a biomarker and dose can be approximated by a linear function for exposure reconstruction purposes. The detailed methodology involved in the probabilistic approaches are beyond the scope of this review article and the readers are directed to related publications in this area (Clewell et al, 2008;Tan and Clewell, 2010;Tan et al, 2012;Grulke et al, 2013;Côté et al, 2014). This approach has been used to derive exposure distributions to several VOCs such as chloroform bromodichloromethane, dibromochloromethane, and bromoform using NHANES III dataset (Tan et al, 2007;Lyons et al, 2008;McNally et al, 2012).…”

Editorial: New analytical and statistical approaches for interpreting the relationships among environmental stressors and biomarkers

“…A second concern is how the environment interacts with human systems biology, what the variability is in ''normal'' subjects, and how such biological observations might be reconstructed to infer external stressors (Bean et al, 2014a;Pleil, 2009;Sobus et al, 2010;Tan et al, 2012;Zhu et al, 2013a). In this article, we report on an eclectic collection of recent research presentations from a symposium at the 248th American Chemical Society meeting held in San Francisco, 10-14 August 2014 that focused on providing some insight into these important issues, particularly, approaches and impacts on our understanding of biomarker data.…”