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Executive Summary
Pages 1-20

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From page 1... ... Determining the concentrations of specific chemicals in human tissues such as blood and adipose tissue can serve in effect to integrate many kinds of human exposures across media and time. A well-designed national program to monitor toxic chemicals in human tissues is a necessary component of an anticipatory strategy aimed at early identification of and response to health and environmental problems concerning xenobiotic toxicants in the environment. Read the entire page →
From page 2... ... Taken together, these characteristics make tissue monitoring a potentially important adjunct to conventional environmental monitoring and one that is uniquely valuable in indicating exposures and doses that may lead to harmful effects. THE NATIONAL HUMAN MONITORING PROGRAM The National Human Monitoring Program (NHMP) Read the entire page →
From page 3... ... The NBN was intended to establish baselines and time trends for the nation and for various population groups. It was conceived as a way to complement the NHATS data by permitting less invasive collection of a tissue that reflected more recent exposures compared with the long-past exposures shown by adipose tissue collection. Read the entire page →
From page 4... ... � Assess the utility and cost effectiveness of the program and identify major scientific, technical, and ethical issues that should receive priority attention. � Address the larger issue of developing consensus on biologic markers of environmental hazards in the context of overall federal efforts to monitor markers of human exposure to environmental toxicants. Read the entire page →
From page 5... ... GOALS AND POTENTIAL USES OF A NATIONAL PROGRAM TO MONITOR HUMAN TISSUES The committee determined that an ideal national human monitoring program should do the following: � Measure concentrations of known chemical contaminants in human tissues and help identify new or previously unrecognized hazards related to chemical substances found in the environment, especially those resulting from human activities. � Establish trends in body burdens of toxicants that result from changes in manufacture, use, and disposal patterns, and thus monitor the results of programs intended to control specific chemical hazards. Read the entire page →
From page 6... ... The committee further recommends ~ a new program of human tissue monitoring be developed with &patch, that the HEMP be conned one ill a successor program is established, and that the c~wrzge be completed as soon as is consistent with an orderly ~ar~siCertain aspects of the NHATS should be preserved and evaluated for continued support: the network for collection of adipose tissue specimens (though it will need modifications, the tissue archive, and the record of past analyses. Toxicologic Issues Although tissue-monitoring data alone can signal the need to conduct studies on specific environmental chemicals, tissue monitoring to indicate past exposures to chemicals in the environment is best viewed as one component of a comprehensive environmental monitoring program. Read the entire page →
From page 7... ... , which tend to accumulate in adipose tissues. New trends of environmental exposures, advances in analytic chemistry, increased sensitivity of equipment, and the discontinuation of the use of most halogenated aromatic pesticides and many halogenated aromatic industrial chemicals make the study of other tissues important as well as feasible. Read the entire page →
From page 8... ... Matched specimer~s offat~rn different anu~rnic regions also ought be use Sampling Methods One of the primary deficiencies in the CHATS is that donors of adipose tissues collected are not a representative sample of the U.S. population (see Chapter 4~. Read the entire page →
From page 9... ... It is implicitly assumed that contaminant concentrations are the same in all adipose tissue in the body. � Recent uses of composite measurements have made it impossible to provide prevalence estimates and seriously weakened the estimates of mean contamination concentrations for the sex, race, and age subdomains. Read the entire page →
From page 10... ... Given me state of the NHATS current archive of ~sue, the comWee believes that Me fig In samples of adipose tissue laced have little or Rio vane to a successor prawn or to over p=ti;es. However, the committee recommends that a successor program give the use of the current archive early consideration, specifically asking whether the archive should be saved indefinitely or discarded, and if it is to be saved, how it should be preserved and used. Read the entire page →
From page 11... ... Some reduce development costs and lead time, some reduce the number of assays needed for monitoring, and some reduce the cost per assay. Reductions in development costs can be achieved by targeting analyses with similar chemical properties to minimize the number or complexity of analytic protocols or by combining method development with actual sample analysis. Read the entire page →
From page 12... ... Criteria for determining the relative importance of a candidate target chemical should be separated from issues of analytic feasibility until late in the planning effort. Identification of one or more analyses that might require a new assay protocol would be important in planning future method development. Read the entire page →
From page 13... ... The multiple aspects of a national human-tissue monitoring program has meant that, to some extent, the NHMP is not an integrated part of any specific EPA regulatory program and, therefore, is not at the top of any major agenda. The committee has specific concerns about the untoward effects of placing a monitoring program in any subunit with direct, major regulatory responsibilities. Read the entire page →
From page 14... ... The corrvni~ee furry conc~dles due support should either be increased enough to support a useful prog~n, or He progr~n scold be e~ninoted A clear decision to end the program would discourage present and potential users from expecting data that cannot be produced; would be a clear statement that EPA does not accord human-tissue monitoring a high priority; and would transfer institutional responsibility out of EPA, perhaps to another federal agency Serious drawbacks to a decision to eliminate the monitoring program include the likelihood that no comprehensive, coordinated program would be developed elsewhere, loss of skilled staff and institutional memory, and perhaps destruction of specimens that have been banked and saved. The committee urges that EPA consider termination of human-tissue monitoring only Read the entire page →
From page 15... ... The next support level considered by the committee was $5 million per year, exclusive of staff salaries and overhead. Although the committee did not undertake detailed cost analyses, it believes that EPA's history as well as the operation of other tissue-monitoring programs suggest that $5 million per year could support a substantial flow of high-quality, policy-relevant information. Read the entire page →
From page 16... ... Other Administrative Issues Details of program structure and organization depend heavily on a host of management decisions that the committee cannot foresee. Some of the issues that must be considered, however, include in-house scientific and managerial competence; professional staff members fully dedicated to human-tissue monitoring; and program design. Read the entire page →
From page 17... ... A specific person or persons must be responsible for outreach efforts, which are warranted by the multiuse nature of the program, the wide-ranging interest in the resulting data, and the clear indications that more passive approaches to publicizing program reports have failed to reach some critical target groups. Read the entire page →
From page 18... ... 18 O MONITORING HUSSEIN TISSUES Cooperation and Information Transfer with Other Organizations A fissue~nonilwing and mchivalp~vn must coopt and commun~ wick of by of EPA, of At al academic and private set, and foreign en~m~pro~ns. Not orgy are sol coop~a~n and upon exhale import ut size Olson of Amp tissue rrmnit~ng butca~ingutfomta~ Change will be conical to the e#:~t opinion of the new PI The committee thinks that special value might be found in the joint development of a small set of measurements to be made in similar ways across a broad range of programs or a means of establishing comparability among programs that could lead to a worldwide data base for environmental to~ncants that persist over long times or migrate across long distances and across national boundaries. Read the entire page →
From page 19... ... Monitoring Human Tissues for Toxic Substances Read the entire page →

From page 1...

... Determining the concentrations of specific chemicals in human tissues such as blood and adipose tissue can serve in effect to integrate many kinds of human exposures across media and time. A well-designed national program to monitor toxic chemicals in human tissues is a necessary component of an anticipatory strategy aimed at early identification of and response to health and environmental problems concerning xenobiotic toxicants in the environment.

Executive Summary Pages 1-20

Executive Summary
Pages 1-20