Human Milk Biomonitoring Data: Interpretation and Risk Assessment Issues

TLDR: The deliberations of the panel convened for the Technical Workshop on Human Milk Surveillance and Biomonitoring for Environmental Chemicals in the United States, held at the Hershey Medical Center, Pennsylvania State College of Medicine, on several issues related to risk assessment and human milk biomonitored are described.

Abstract: Biomonitoring data can, under certain conditions, be used to describe potential risks to human health (for example, blood lead levels used to determine children’s neurodevelopmental risk). At present, there are very few chemical exposures at low levels for which sufficient data exist to state with confidence the link between levels of environmental chemicals in a person’s body and his or her risk of adverse health effects. Human milk biomonitoring presents additional complications. Human milk can be used to obtain information on both the levels of environmental chemicals in the mother and her infant’s exposure to an environmental chemical. However, in terms of the health of the mother, there are little to no extant data that can be used to link levels of most environmental chemicals in human milk to a particular health outcome in the mother. This is because, traditionally, risks are estimated based on dose, rather than on levels of environmental chemicals in the body, and the relationship between dose and...