Mixture risk assessment and human biomonitoring: Lessons learnt from HBM4EU

Area of Science:

• Environmental Health Sciences
• Toxicology
• Risk Assessment

Background:

• Current chemical risk assessment primarily evaluates single substances, neglecting complex environmental mixtures.
• Assessing chemical mixtures is challenging due to the vast number of chemicals and limited data on actual human exposure.
• Existing mixture risk assessment (MRA) tools lack sufficient maturity for regulatory implementation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate approaches for assessing combined exposures and MRA within the European Human Biomonitoring Initiative (HBM4EU).
• To provide recommendations for policy development and future research on chemical mixtures.
• To highlight the role of human biomonitoring in understanding real-life chemical exposures.

Main Methods:

• Utilized human biomonitoring data to assess internal exposures to chemical mixtures.
• Developed and applied novel approaches to identify co-occurrence patterns of chemicals.
• Engaged stakeholders through workshops to discuss and refine recommendations.

Main Results:

• Human biomonitoring effectively reveals population-wide exposure to real-life chemical mixtures.
• Identified specific chemicals acting as 'risk drivers' contributing significantly to health risks.
• Discovered clusters of co-occurring chemicals, often regulated under disparate legislative frameworks.

Conclusions:

• Chemical mixtures pose a significant public health concern, necessitating advanced assessment strategies.
• Human biomonitoring is a valuable tool for informing MRA and identifying key risk drivers.
• Recommendations for policy and further research were developed, emphasizing the need for integrated MRA approaches.