Biological markers of solvent exposure

Abstract

The important limitation of many epidemiologic studies is the relative inaccuracy of the assessment of the magnitude of exposure. For some solvents, the concentration in biological media is an indication of the internal exposure and is an indirect indication of the health risk, at least for acute effects. For long-term effects, e.g., carcinogenicity, biological monitoring data can also be used as showed with the individual occupational data on the level of trichloroacetic acid (TCA) in urine. Occupational epidemiology can improve the methods for the assessment of the actual total exposure and health risk in environmental epidemiology by providing higher dose cohort data.