- Providing recommendations on the use of occupation-related information from general population studies regarding chemical exposure.
- Offering recommendations for future general population studies on collecting and analysing data that can help identify occupational exposure.
- Improving occupational exposure assessments in line with the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) and Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) processes.
Key messages
- It is relatively difficult to identify occupationally exposed groups from the general population data.
- In order to be able to identify potential occupational exposed groups from general population surveys, it is of utmost importance to have a high enough sample size with ISCO-coded information on occupations. This means that data from several national studies needs to be combined.
- ISCO-08 encoding of occupations with at least 4 digits is needed to get meaningful results. This requires that detailed data on occupations and job descriptions are collected as part of general population surveys.
Overview
This project uses human biomonitoring data from the European Human Biomonitoring Initiative (HBM4EU ↗) to examine occupational exposure to chemicals like cadmium ↗, chromium ↗, PAHs ↗, and bisphenols ↗. The goal is to determine whether data from general population studies can reveal elevated exposure levels among workers compared to non-occupationally exposed population groups. It is designed as a short-term feasibility (pilot) study but the results may help improving the design of future general studies in future, provide further information for improving exposure assessments and support regulatory frameworks in Europe, including the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH ↗) and Occupational Safety and Health (OSH ↗), to better identify and manage occupational health risks.
By developing an approach to analyse HBM4EU general population data, this study aims to identify groups that are occupationally exposed to higher levels of harmful chemicals. It furthermore seeks to evaluate how general population studies, focused on adults can detect these elevated exposure levels. The results may also help to explain the variability observed in the general population biomonitoring data.
The results of this feasibility study will be valuable for future human biomonitoring research on the general population. Thus, researchers conducting these studies will be among the key beneficiaries of the findings.
The regulatory outcomes of this project can contribute to both REACH and OSH processes. When general population human biomonitoring data is used for exposure and risk assessments, it is crucial to identify the primary sources of exposure. If occupational exposure is a potential confounding factor, it needs to be detected and accounted for to avoid distorting the results. At the same time, the data may contribute to occupational exposure assessments under REACH and OSH processes.
Since this is a feasibility study aimed at proving the concept, there is no need to align the project’s timeline with existing policy agendas.
Achievements & Results
In the first year, relevant studies were identified, and initial work on selecting studies and coding occupations began. By the second year, agreements with data owners were finalised, but data analyses awaited access to datasets, and coding of occupations continued.
In the third year, data analyses for the International Standard Classification of Occupations 2008 (ISCO-08 ↗) coded datasets were completed, conclusions were drawn, and a report was finalised and a publication on the results is planned for the second half of 2025.
Policy relevance
Improves our understanding on the human exposure to chemicals, including occupational exposure. By doing so, it supports EU legislation on the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) and Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) legislation in EU.