Advances in human biomonitoring to assess levels of dietary exposure to potentially harmful chemicals from food or other sources

Actual exposure observed by biomonitoring studies in humans provides data on the sum of exposures by different routes and sources of exposure. For dietary risk assessment, these data are essential for determining whether observed exposures are below toxicological reference values and for validating external exposure estimation models. They are also compared with HBM guidance values derived from toxicological reference values to estimate risk characterisation ratios, which are very useful for communicating with risk managers and the general public and for prioritising actions to be taken in terms of research, risk assessment or risk management. The chapter presents the progress made in recent years.