2007 Public Lecture Series - Science at Your Service
May 10, 2007
BIOMONITORING: Taking Environmental Exposure Personally
Everyday life exposes us to a huge array of chemicals. Many are stored in our body and circulate in our blood, often for long periods of time. Biomonitoring provides a way to assess the level of individual exposure to these compounds from the environment and how the exposure is changing with time. Recent advances in techniques for separation of chemical mixtures and development of sensitive analytical instruments, such as mass spectrometers, allow biomonitoring studies of large populations to be undertaken. Data generated by these studies will illustrate the effectiveness of public health efforts to reduce general exposure and to set reference ranges that may be used to determine whether an individual or group has unusual exposure. This talk will discuss how biomonitoring studies applied these new instrumental methods to the detection of exposure to components of secondhand tobacco smoke, flame retardants, pesticides and to a known chemical release from an industrial incident.