[Biological monitoring of chemical exposure].

The concept of biological monitoring (BM) has evoked a lot of interest among individual scientists and international organizations. Biological monitoring of exposure has thus far been applied to environmental and occupational toxicology or epidemiological studies. At present, BM plays no more than complementary role in industrial hygiene. Moreover, it is not clear whether BM belongs to occupational hygiene or to occupational medicine. Consequently, BM recommendations are not regarded as legal standards in most countries. Nowadays, when analytical problems have almost ceased to exist due to new laboratory techniques and quality assurance systems, the methods for interpreting the results have become a major issue. New, promising areas of BM application include determination of pesticides, antineoplastic drugs, hard metals, and unchanged volatile organic compounds in urine. The identification of new possible health-based biomarkers of exposure and the development of more sensitive methods due to decreasing occupational exposure limits seem to be one of the most important issues.