Health-related interpretation of human biomonitoring results – new and updated human biomonitoring guidance values from PARC and HBM4EU

Abstract

During the first three years of the Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC), we derived health-based human biomonitoring guidance values (HBM-GVs) for 11 substances to enable the direct health-related interpretation of human biomonitoring (HBM) results. HBM-GVs indicate the concentration threshold of the substance or its specific metabolite(s) in human biological samples up to which according to current knowledge no adverse health effects are expected, assuming exposure to the individual substance alone. New HBM-GVs are now available for the pesticides’ active ingredients gamma-/lambda-cyhalothrin, acetamiprid, and imidacloprid, the ortho-phthalate diisononyl phthalate (DiNP) and the ortho-phthalate substitute diethylhexyl terephthalate (DEHTP), the UV filters DHHB (diethylamino hydroxybenzoyl hexyl benzoate, Uvinul® A plus) and benzophenone-3, the metals aluminium and its inorganic compounds, methyl mercury and elemental/inorganic mercury, and nickel. In addition, we updated the HBM-GVs, which were derived as part of the European HBM4EU initiative using the mass balance approach, in light of new findings regarding the body mass normalised daily urine volumes and taking into account consistent rounding in the calculation and presentation of the values. For one substance, chromium VI, we updated HBM Exposure Equivalents for Cancer Risk (HBM-EECR) for workers exposed to highly soluble chromates, e.g. in the chrome-plating sector, and newly derived HBM-EECR for workers exposed to chromium (VI) oxides formed under hot conditions, e.g. in welding. In addition, we drew up an HBM-GV-related scoping document for selected per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The main conclusions of the work described above are summarised in this publication.