Mapping of exposure to unwanted substances
Project
|Published
The NIPH has established the Environmental Biobank where we collect blood and urine samples from people living in Norway.
Summary
An important task in PARC is to monitor the European population's exposure to unwanted substances. This must be done by measuring concentrations of relevant substances in human samples (e.g., blood and urine). This is called human biomonitoring. This was initiated in an earlier EU project called HBM4EU and which is now continuing in PARC.
The NIPH has established the Environmental Biobank where we collect blood and urine samples from people living in Norway. The participants also answer a questionnaire about housing, lifestyle, diet and the environment around them. Samples from children and young people collected in the Environmental Biobank in 2016-17 were included in the biomonitoring carried out in HBM4EU. The results have given us a good overview of which unwanted substances Norwegian children and young people have in their bodies, and how these levels compare with other European countries.
The Environmental Biobank will soon begin a new collection of samples and the Environmental Biobank has now been chosen as one of the European studies to be part of PARC. The Biobank can satisfy the requirements set by PARC for how the analyses are carried out so that the results are comparable in all countries. This will give us the opportunity to see if there are changes in the levels since the previous samples were collected, plus other unwanted substances will also be measured this time.
PARC aims to establish a sustainable system for regular monitoring of the European population's exposure to unwanted substances. The NIPH is actively participating in this work and this is also an important goal for the Environmental Biobank.
FHI is also involved in work in PARC where biomonitoring values are established that indicate the upper limit for safe exposure, called HBM guidance values.