Introduction
The need to assess the real health effects from exposure to chemicals is hampered by our inadequate understanding of what chemicals people are exposed to and to what degree these exposures might cause short term (acute) or long term (chronic) adverse health effects.

At the University Hygienic Laboratory, we are striving not only to understand the nature and extent of environmental contamination in Iowa, but also to provide data to correlate and link specific environmental insult to possible health effects.

What is Human Biomonitoring?
Human Biomonitoring is the measurement of toxic substances in the human body. The purpose of Human Biomonitoring is to determine if you have been exposed to a toxic substance, how much of that toxic substance is in your body, and whether the amount of that toxic substance in your body is enough to cause an adverse health effect.

Toxic substances generally enter the body through one of three routes: ingestion, inhalation, or dermal penetration.

The amount of substance available for toxic action depends on a number of factors. In most cases, the substance is absorbed to some degree into the bloodstream where it is distributed throughout the body. At this point, toxic substances have three possible fates: they are stored, excreted, or metabolized. Most chemicals undergo some combination of all three. Storage typically occurs in a reservoir such as bone or adipose tissue. Excretion involves the elimination of substances or their metabolites through urine, feces, saliva, sweat, or exhalation. Substances that are metabolized are often chemically altered to make excretion of the substance easier. The time (antecedent or present), duration, and intensity of exposure to a particular substance will dictate the choice of human tissue that is sampled to monitor the substance or its metabolites. Most Human Biomonitoring involves sampling humans for whole blood or serum and urine. However, meaningful results have been achieved from sampling saliva, feces, hair, nails, teeth, breath, and sweat. For example, when exposed to lead from paint, approximately 90 percent of lead absorbed will be stored in the bone over time and 10 percent is excreted, mostly through the urine, nails, and hair.

Why Do Human Biomonitoring?
The goal of Human Biomonitoring is to help prevent environmental disease by doing the following:

• Determine which environmental chemicals actually get into people
• Measure how much exposure each person has
• Assess exposure for health studies of exposed populations
• Determine which population groups are at high risk for exposure and adverse health effects
• Assess the effectiveness of public health interventions to reduce exposures
• Monitor trends in exposure levels over time

What Can UHL Do for You?
University Hygienic Laboratory is uniquely positioned to help you with a full range of professional services from design, development, and writing funding/grant proposals to preparing final consultative reports on sound scientific laboratory data.

Please contact Don Simmons, Ph.D. for more information or to schedule a free initial consultation.

donald-simmons@uiowa.edu
phone 515.281.5371
fax 515.243.1349