Event highlights
The second in-person meeting of the European Environment and Health Process (EHP) Partnership on Human Biomonitoring (HBM) was attended by 30 representatives from 19 Member States, including 5 that joined the Partnership after its first meeting in late 2023. The new additions brought the number of partners to 21, reflecting an increasing interest in the work of the Partnership, which was established in July 2023 at the Seventh Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health. In fact, HBM is an important tool for the assessment of chemical exposure and risks, one of the priority actions for the safe management of chemicals and the protection of health in the WHO European Region that Member States identified in a recent WHO meeting (2024).
At the Partnership meeting, participants shared knowledge and best practices on HBM and agreed to a workplan to further streamline HBM in national chemical safety plans. They confirmed a focus on HBM promotion through work on communication and stakeholder engagement, planning and implementation of HBM studies, interpretation of HBM results and the development of an overview of HBM in regulatory and legal frameworks.
Following the meeting, on 12–13 February 2025, WHO held a 2-day training on HBM, which gathered 37 participants, mostly national experts from Serbia.
Event notice
In the WHO European Region and globally, promoting the use of human biomonitoring (HBM) is a recognized priority for chemical safety. HBM programmes can provide data – for example on exposure levels, most exposed population groups or trends of exposure – that are crucial for the development of risk protection measures. However, such programmes are not systematically established across the Region, and capacity for HBM varies widely among countries in terms of laboratories, human resources and expertise.
The European Environment and Health Process (EHP) Partnership on HBM aims at extending the use of HBM by sharing experience and building capacity on HBM in the WHO European Region, with the ultimate objective of supporting regulatory decisions on hazardous chemicals and protecting public health from their adverse effects.
The second meeting of the Partnership on HBM will bring together partners and invited experts to:
- provide updates on Partnership development and HBM activities;
- discuss potential links between the Partnership on HBM and the European Union Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals; and
- share countries’ experience on initiating national HBM studies.
The meeting will also assess progress made since the Partnership’s establishment and discuss future activities.
Building capacity on HBM
Back-to-back with the meeting, WHO will hold a 2-day training on HBM addressed mainly to experts from Serbia and open to interested meeting participants. The training covers a wide range of topics including principles and objectives of HBM studies, selection of biomarkers and identification of target populations, planning and conducting HBM surveys, laboratory analysis and data management, and examples of HBM of chemicals of public health concern, such as mercury. The training will serve as a platform for sharing knowledge and expertise between national and international experts, and contribute to strengthening HBM capacity in the European Region.
About the Partnership
The EHP Partnerships are a thematic voluntary cooperation mechanism among Member States and other stakeholders, launched within the EHP at the Seventh Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health in 2023.
Georgia and Germany co-lead the Partnership on HBM, currently involving 21 countries from western, central and eastern Europe: Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The Partnership workplan covers the organization of work and actions for HBM promotion towards the short-, medium- and long-term goals of the Partnership. These include sharing concepts, tools and information; facilitating national HBM programmes; promoting regulation and policy impact; and communicating on HBM.