Screening of population level biomonitoring data from the Canadian Health Measures Survey in a risk-based context

Since 2007, the Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS) has been collecting biomonitoring data from the general Canadian population and has provided, to date, nationally representative concentrations for hundreds of environmental biomarkers in blood or urine. Biomonitoring Equivalents (BEs) have been developed as tools to help interpret biomonitoring data in a health risk context at a population level. In this paper, BEs are used to relate biomonitoring data from the CHMS (2007–2011) to existing exposure guidance values developed by Health Canada and other government agencies. Chemical-specific hazard quotients (HQs) and/or cancer risk estimates are calculated using existing BEs corresponding to environmental chemicals analyzed in the CHMS. For the majority of environmental chemicals, calculated HQ values are less than 1 indicating exposure is below published exposure guidance values. Individual biomonitoring data for two biomarkers of metal exposure (inorganic arsenic and cadmium) resulted in HQ values exceeding 1 suggesting that exposure may be above existing guidance values for a portion of the population, at least intermittently. This type of analysis may be used by researchers, risk assessors, and risk managers in prioritization efforts.