Back in 2016, within the EU funded Human Biomonitoring Initiative in Europe ↗ (HBM4EU), human biomonitoring bloomed in Portugal. Portugal created its National Hub (NH-PT) in early 2017 to coordinate the activities among six national partners, which has grown to eleven partners.  

Over the years, NH-PT has organised four human biomonitoring workshops. The first three occurred under HBM4EU in May 2018, October 2019 and November 2020 (online), followed by the first PARC workshop that took place on April 19 this year. This latest workshop attracted 200 participants, both onsite and online.

“These national workshops are great opportunities for partners to meet, exchange insights and deepen their understanding on human biomonitoring and the impacts of chemical substances on human health and the environment” explains Isabel Moura, the Portuguese National Hub Contact Point.  

The workshops have played a significant role in initiating and promoting the development, which is still ongoing, of a wider Portuguese Human Biomonitoring Network. It includes stakeholders such as relevant industries, companies, hospitals and other health care providers, union representatives, public administration organisations, regulators and even citizens who participated in a focus group.

The theme of this 4^th Workshop on Human Biomonitoring in Portugal was “Advancing Health Protection through Human Biomonitoring ↗”. Presentations explored cutting-edge international research on human biomonitoring and its role in safeguarding public health from chemical risks.

This first PARC workshop included two invited speakers who shared their experience from HBM4EU ↗: Marike Kolossa Gehring, from the German Environment Agency ↗, presented some of HBM4EU’s scientific results and their policy implications, while., Greet Schoeters, from the University of Antwerp, shared her experience on how human biomonitoring can bridge science and policy.  

Among the notable national research presentations were Project CANTE and Project BioFireEx: Project CANTE and Project BioFireEx. Project CANTE addresses a critical limitation in One Health, which is the limited availability of integrated samples from the environment, animals and humans. To overcome such limitation, the Project CANTE will create an integrated repository of human, environmental and animal samples. The BioFireEx Project provides a multidisciplinary approach for a comprehensive assessment of firefighters' occupational exposure during forest fires, while also evaluating short-time health effects. Portuguese male firefighters from the Bragança district were biomonitored for this purpose.

Throughout the workshop, two key messages resonated with participants: the importance of closer collaboration between science and policy-making, enhanced coordination across ministries, and greater involvement of decision-makers; and the need for improved science communication to citizens, decision-makers, and stakeholders at national and international levels.

Each workshop advances the collective goal of contributing to the creation of a National Biomonitoring Platform to hold harmonised and comparable Portuguese biomonitoring data. The knowledge gained is expected to inform measures aimed at  reducing exposure to toxic chemicals.

Looking ahead, the NH-Portugal aims to strengthen its Portuguese Human Biomonitoring Network, by expanding stakeholders’ involvement working in human biomonitoring themes relevant to Portugal and the European Union.