AD5.6 - Policy implications of the indicators

Under the Human Biomonitoring Initiative in Europe (HBM4EU), Human Biomonitoring (HBM) based indicators are being developed that can help answer relevant policy questions focusing on chemical exposure. These policy questions are addressed in the scoping
documents for each prioritised substance/substance group within the project.
HBM-based indicators may help to illustrate research results in an easy and interpretable way, as well as allowing for an evaluation of policy effectiveness. In previous deliverables, data quality of the limited datasets available in the HBM4EU repository was discussed (AD5.3 Indicator template preparation), after which indicator examples were done to illustrate the use of the indicators to answer policy questions for future use (AD5.5 Generating indicators incorporating Human Biomonitoring GuidanceValues (HBM-GVs)).

In the meantime, the harmonised data from the HBM4EU aligned studies has become available and the aim of this current deliverable is to produce indicators to:

• Summarise exposure levels per sampling site
• Follow up sub-groups using stratifiers such as: gender, age, socio-economic status (SES), country, year (time trends and monitor differences after enforcement of new legislation).

For this purpose, two different types of HBM-based indicators are visualised:
Result indicators that will present time and spatial trends of HBM exposure data, using P50 and P95 values. Quantitative and qualitative analysis will allow an evaluation on policy effectiveness

Impact indicators, using P95 values, that place HBM data in a health risk context by including the respective HBM-GVs Result indicators are descriptive and allow us to respond the question “What are current internal exposures?”. These are a good way to track policy efficacy (“Are the measures working?”)
Impact indicators are produced for substances for which f HBM-GVs are available. They are used to assess health impacts (“Are we better off?”). Therefore, a close exchange between T5.2 (Development and consolidation of HBM guidance values (HBM-GVs)) and
T5.4 (HBM-based indicators) is necessary.
This Additional Deliverable will show first examples of HBM-based indicators with the data from the HBM4EU aligned studies (status: 31/08/ 2021).
Indicators were derived for cadmium, bisphenol, phthalates and DINCH and PFAS with data from DEMOCOPHES, and the HBM4EU aligned studies.