Biomonitoring

Biological monitoring has the potential to decrease the uncertainty in estimating exposures by conventional methods, to provide biologically relevant measures of exposure, and to determine whether individuals or a population are at increased risk of adverse health effects caused by specific chemicals. Recent developments in system toxicology and "omics" techniques have provided many promising biological markers to assess both local and systemic changes following nanomaterial exposure. In biomarker development, a pragmatic approach is to draw exploratory and candidate biomarkers from other fields of particle and metal toxicology. Since biological monitoring has a different meaning in research and in practice, candidate biomarkers, which are potentially useful for occupational health surveillance, epidemiology and environmental sustainability should meet validity criteria, and thus undergo field validation and assessment of their predictive value toward relevant health outcomes and, ultimately, potential risks associated with nanomaterials. Moreover, biomarkers based on noninvasive methods deserve particular consideration in human biological monitoring.