Biomonitoring Home

State Grant Activities

2009 Grantees

In 2009, CDC awarded a total of $5 million to three states (California, New York, and Washington) for state-based laboratory biomonitoring programs. This funding will increase the capability and capacity of these states to conduct biomonitoring and thus assess human exposure to environmental chemicals within their jurisdictions. Thirty-three states applied for funding, either individually or in partnership with other states.

To learn more about each of the funded states, please visit:

Background

Throughout the world, biomonitoring provides unique and valuable information on human exposure to environmental chemicals by measuring the chemicals or their breakdown products in people. Almost always, the measurement of the amount of chemical that gets into a person is the most health-relevant exposure measurement.

Specifically, biomonitoring is the direct measurement of environmental chemicals in people's blood, urine, or other body tissues. It determines which chemicals—and how much of them—get into people after they have been exposed. Biomonitoring improves health officials' ability to make timely and appropriate health decisions by providing better information on human exposure.

For the past three decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Environmental Health Laboratory has used biomonitoring to determine people's exposure to chemicals. CDC produces critical data on the U.S. population's exposure to hundreds of environmental chemicals and publishes its findings in the peer-reviewed literature and in CDC's National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals.

State public health officials recognize the value of biomonitoring and of CDC's Exposure Report. They are also interested in conducting biomonitoring assessments of chemical exposures among residents within their own jurisdictions and then comparing their results with the national data published by CDC.