Human biomonitoring

Organophosphates are used in a variety of agricultural and industrial applications, e.g. as insecticides, plasticisers or flame retardants. The study examines the exposure of these substances to the human organism on the basis of a sample of the Austrian population. To this end, an analytical method has been developed to cover the metabolites of these substances. It is shown that these groups of substances and their metabolites are detectable in the urine. Two thirds of the subjects studied were contaminated with at least one metabolite. Human biomonitoring is used to measure the exposure of the human organism to chemicals. This will also help to identify particularly polluted population groups, evaluate measures, collect stress trends or identify regional or social differences.