European Human Biomonitoring Initiative

The overarching goal of the European Human Biomonitoring Initiative (HBM4EU) is to generate knowledge to inform the safe management of chemicals and so protect human health. We will use human biomonitoring to understand human exposure to chemicals and resulting health impacts and will communicate with policy makers to ensure that our results are exploited in the design of new chemicals policies and the evaluation of existing measures.

Key objectives include:

• Harmonizing procedures for human biomonitoring across 26 countries, to provide policy makers with comparable data on human internal exposure to chemicals and mixtures of chemicals at EU level;

• Linking data on internal exposure to chemicals to aggregate external exposure and identifying exposure pathways and upstream sources. Information on exposure pathways is critical to the design of targeted policy measures to reduce exposure;
• Generating scientific evidence on the causal links between human exposure to chemicals and negative health outcomes; and

• Adapting chemical risk assessment methodologies to use human biomonitoring data and account for the contribution of multiple external exposure pathways to the total chemical body burden.

We will achieve these objectives by harmonizing human biomonitoring initiatives in 26 countries, drawing on existing expertise and building new capacities. By establishing National Hubs in each country to coordinate activities, we will create a robust Human Biomonitoring Platform at European level.

This initiative contributes directly to the improvement of health and well-being for all age groups, by investigating how exposure to chemicals affects the health of different groups, such as children, pregnant women, foetuses and workers. We will also investigate how factor such as behavior, lifestyle and socio-economic status influence internal exposure to chemicals across the EU population. This knowledge will support policy action to reduce chemical exposure and protect health.

HBM4EU is a joint effort of 30 countries, the European Environment Agency and the European Commission, co-funded under Horizon 2020. Running from 2017 to 2021, HBM4EU generates knowledge to inform the safe management of chemicals and so protect human health in Europe.

HBM4EU developed strategy and communication lines for feeding results into policy processes and for transmitting the main messages to targeted audiences as policy makers, stakeholders and the general public. We updated scoping documents on background information for each priority substance (group) on hazard, exposure, legislation, but also on public concern and the policy questions to be answered in HBM4EU.

To establish a sustainable HBM programme in Europe, input and expectations collected from national hubs, relevant EU agencies and EC Directorate Generals are used to develop a concept anchored in the EU’s Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability.