Biomarkers and Human Biomonitoring in Occupational Medicine

Over the last years, biomarkers have increasingly expanded and become early and specific end points for monitoring cellular responses to various disease states and exposures to drugs and chemical agents. They have enjoyed some success as predictors of health outcomes for a number of clinical diseases, but their application for chemical exposure risk assessments has been more limited. Biomarkers may be classified into markers of exposure, effect, and susceptibility. To be useful in providing linkage to human exposure, biomarkers should be as specific as possible to the exposure agents and highly sensitive, so to detect even low levels of exposure.