Assessing the Fitness for Purpose and Novel Pooling Applications of Human Biomonitoring Programs Based on the Pooling of Deidentified Surplus Pathology Samples

Australians are exposed to a wide variety of environmental contaminants, yet the absence of a nationally coordinated Human Biomonitoring (HBM) program has limited the nation’s capacity to assess exposure-related trends and respond to public health concerns in a timely manner. HBM is considered the gold standard methodology for quantifying human exposure to contaminants, but conventional major HBM programs, while valuable, are often constrained by resource, ethical, and logistical challenges. To address these limitations, researchers from the Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences (QAEHS), the University of Queensland (UQ), have established an innovative HBM framework based on the subsampling and pooling of deidentified surplus pathology specimens. For the past 20 years, it has offered a time-efficient, cost-effective and ethically sound alternative to conventional HBM methods. However, key questions associated with this approach concern the fitness for purpose of surplus pathology samples for monitoring general population exposure, the underlying distribution of individual exposures within pooled data, which is essential for deriving population reference values and optimising pooling strategies, and the potential of targeted pooling methodologies to elucidate spatial and subpopulation-level trends in exposure that are otherwise poorly characterised. This PhD project aims to directly evaluate these issues by comparing exposure estimates derived from QAEHS HBM samples with those from an independent major HBM program, characterising the underlying distribution of exposures to inform exposure reference values and pooling optimisation strategies, and developing novel targeted subsampling and pooling protocols to assess spatial exposure trends. The outcomes are expected to validate whether the QAEHS HBM Program can provide a reliable, scalable, and fit for purpose framework for population-level exposure surveillance in Australia.

Please note this is a PhD student Progress Review, Julia Orr will be presenting.