For two days the international experts discussed different aspects of human biomonitoring (HBM) on the conference, entitled “Science and policy for a healthy future”. HBM is a key information and monitoring instrument for health-related environmental protection. HBM studies deliver the scientific data necessary for making environmental policy decisions, for example on chemicals in the human organism, on population groups with particularly high levels of exposure an on the effects of the regulation of chemicals. Because chemicals are used everywhere in the world, the conference focused also on cooperating measures and programs at European and global level.The conference was jointly organized by the German Federal Environment Ministry and the German Environment Agency.
Specific scientific topics and discussions were:
- new results from worldwide important human biomonitoring programs
- human biomonitoring in birth cohorts
- innovative methods in human biomonitoring
- human biomonitoring in health risk assessment
- harmonization of biomonitoring data – Europe-wide and worldwide
Additionally HBM policy strategy aspects and HBM’s place in chemical policy was examined in two panel discussions.