Human biomonitoring projects abroad

Many countries have long been running HBM programmes to monitor the population’s exposure to chemicals. Increasingly, long-term, multidisciplinary studies – known as cohort studies – are also being carried out, which link HBM data with health data.

HBM programmes

Many countries in Europe and North America conduct periodical HBM programmes (e.g. Germany, the Czech Republic, Canada, USA), giving an overview of the substances the population is exposed to. To make the studies more comparable, international efforts are being made towards harmonisation and cooperation.

HBM in Europe

The better the statistical validity of HBM studies, the more valuable they are. This requires a large number of participants, which is why joint projects have been running at European level for several years now, aimed at harmonizing national studies.

The first such project was DEMOCOPHES (2010–2012), in which Switzerland also participated. Further harmonised HBM studies were carried out as part of the EU project HBM4EU (2017–2022, with Switzerland’s participation), and are currently being conducted under the follow-up project PARC (running from 2022 to 2029).

With the entry into force of the EU Regulation on ‘One substance, one assessment’ on 1 January 2026, an EU-wide HBM project was mandated by law to strengthen chemical safety. This programme is coordinated by the EU authorities EFSA, ECHA and EEA.

HBM Germany

Since 1985 the Federal Environmental Agency runs the nationwide and representative German Environmental Surveys (GerES) to analyse the exposure situation of the German population. These are cross-sectional studies with single sampling of different population groups, e.g. children and adolescents in GerES V (2014–17) and adults in GerES VI (2023–24).

The data of the surveys provide the basis for the Human Biomonitoring Commission to establish reference values (HBM I and HBM II values) of a chemical in a certain body fluid (e.g. urine, blood).

National cohorts

Long-term health studies (cohort studies) are designed to track the health of a representative sample of the population over a long period of time in order to identify the causes of various diseases. Such population cohorts exist, for example, in Germany and France. The CONSTANCES study in France and the NaKo study in Germany each comprise around 200,000 volunteers from the general population who undergo a detailed health examination at regular intervals.

As exposure to chemicals contributes to the development of disease, it makes sense to conduct HBM within such studies. In England, a cohort study is therefore combined with HBM (UK Biobank). An important element of such a study is the establishment of a biobank, so that the collected samples can be stored in a standardized manner and analyzed further.

Further information

Federal Office of Public Health FOPH

Chemical Products Division
Schwarzenburgstrasse 157
Switzerland - 3003 Bern