Key messages

• Non-food exposure pathways: Humans are significantly exposed to organic contaminants through indoor air, dust, drinking water, and soil – pathways that are not systematically monitored like food.
• Linking exposure data: The project aims to connect internal human biomonitoring data with external environmental exposure, enhancing interpretation and risk assessment.
• Regulatory relevance: Results will inform multiple EU policies (e.g. REACH ↗, Drinking Water Directive, Soil Monitoring Law) and support integrated, cross-regulatory assessments.
• Emerging contaminants: Suspect and non-target screening will enable the detection of contaminants that are currently overlooked, new or substitute substances, feeding into early warning systems.
• Supports EU priorities: The project contributes to the “One Substance, One Assessment” (OSOA) goal and aligns with the goals of the EU Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability.

Overview

Human exposure to harmful chemicals occurs not only through food, but also via indoor air, dust, soil, and drinking water. However, while food-related exposure is well-monitored, non-food sources remain less systematically investigated. This project aims to improve understanding of these exposure pathways by linking contaminant levels in human samples with environmental data collected from homes and surroundings.

The project covers samples of indoor air, dust, drinking water, and soil to investigate how non-food sources contribute to human chemical exposure. It focuses on priority organic chemicals such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS ↗), phthalates ↗, bisphenols ↗, pesticides, and other known pollutants like flame retardants and personal care products. In addition, it includes non-target and suspect screening to detect emerging or overlooked substances.

Studying associations between environmental exposure and biomarkers in individuals, the project supports more complete and integrated human exposure assessments. It also contributes to setting draft reference values for chemicals in indoor air and dust, using statistical approaches.

Achievements & Results

• Development of a strategy and associated list of priority substances to be monitored in human samples and environmental matrices.
• Comprehensive review of regulatory lists, chemical inventories, and scientific studies on contaminants monitored in indoor air, dust, drinking water and soil.
• Development of questionnaires for collecting information from the occupants of the homes involved in the project, to help the interpretation of the personal and environmental monitoring campaign.
• Draft SOPs for sampling and analytical measurements of indoor air, dust and soil, drinking water.

Policy relevance

By generating harmonised exposure data and linking it with human biomonitoring results, the project supports:

• “One substance-One assessment” strategy: the project contributes to improved cross-regulatory assessment addressing in particular, REACH, the Drinking Water Directive and the Soil Monitoring Law.
• One Health approach: the project supports holistic risk assessment, integrating environmental and human data to better inform chemical safety policies.
• Early Warning System for Europe: through non-target screening approaches, the project will improve capacity for early identification of emerging contaminants (including novel compounds and substitutes) that may affect human exposure.
• The development of reference values for indoor environment: the statistical benchmarks derived by the project will help regulators distinguish between normal and elevated exposure levels. These benchmarks will help define reference values which are crucial to complement internal exposure reference values, especially where health-based guidance values are absent.