Integrating human biomonitoring into food safety risk assessment: Advances, challenges, and future perspectives

Human biomonitoring (HBM) is a vital tool for evaluating internal exposure to chemicals and their metabolites. It provides a direct reflection of the cumulative body burden from various sources and pathways. Although extensive data has been generated through numerous projects, linking these findings to health risks remains challenging. This review emphasises the importance of HBM in risk assessment and explains how to interpret biomonitoring data. Through concrete examples, including national case studies from Singapore and China and chemical-specific assessments of pesticides and mixtures, we demonstrate the practical application of HBM in food safety. The strengths and limitations of the HBM approach, as well as its future directions, are discussed in detail.