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Biomarkers for human biomonitoring

Author(s): A Alimonti & D Mattei Abstract: ers for human biomonitoring A Alimonti & D Mattei 1 Introduction: People are continuously exposed to thousands of natural and man-made chemicals through the environment, food habits and lifestyles. Using modern analytical technology it is now possible to measure a large number of chemicals and their metabolites present in the human organism (in blood, tissues, urine, hair, etc.). The biomonitoring is a procedure well known since 1927 when the first paper on the use of the analysis of lead in urine in exposed workers was published. Today biomonitoring is largely used to control the health risk of people occupationally and non-occupationally exposed. Programmes on the biomonitoring are currently in progress in the USA [1] and in Europe [2]. The biomonitoring evaluates the human exposure by comparison with appropriate reference values and goes by the knowledge of the relationship between environmental exposure and deriving degree of adverse health effects. When a health risk is revealed, legislators may decide to ban a product or restrict its usage to applications with lower risks for human health. Biomonitoring techniques are becoming, in fact, common tools for decision-makers in the health and environmental field. Consequently, biomarkers can be considered suitable tools to measure the impact of a contaminant on an organism, characterized by its interaction with the endogenous molecules. Biomarkers are able to point out biochemical, genetic, morphological or physiological changes in the organism who suffers from a particular stress situation – due to occurrence of heavy metals, pesticides, etc. Biomarkers suggest the occurrence of toxicological events much earlier than the emergence of those effects that can be evaluated. A biomarker definition is: “…a change, produced by a contaminant, at biochemical or cellular level of a process, a structure or a function that can be measured in a biological system” [3]. This change provides information (qualitative, semi-quantitative or quantitative) about the chemical source, and on the correlation between the biological effects and the environmental contamination levels. A contaminant can cause primary toxicity at biochemical and molecular levels (alterations in enzymatic activity, DNA level, etc.), and, secondly, through cascade events can cause toxicity at cellular, tissue or organism levels. A few homoeostatic responses to a chemical damage represent some possible biomarkers that can be applied for toxicological investigations [4, 5]. Selection of appropriate biomarkers is a critical point, which depends upon the state of scientific knowledge and can be influenced ... Pages: 49 Size: 842 kb Paper DOI: 10.2495/978-1-84564-002-6/06

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