Bil, W., Govarts, E., Zeilmaker, M.J., Woutersen, M., Bessems, J., Ma, Y., Thomsen, C., Haug, L.S., Lignell, S., Gyllenhammar, I., Palkovicova Murinova, L., Fabelova, L., Tratnik, J. Snoj, Kosjek, T., Gabriel, C., Sarigiannis, D., Pedraza-Diaz, S., Esteban-López, M., Castaño, A., Rambaud, L., Riou, M., Franken, C., Colles, A., Vogel, N., Kolossa-Gehring, M., Halldorsson, T.I., Uhl, M., Schoeters, G., Santonen, T., Vinggaard, A.M., Unión Europea. Comisión Europea. H2020, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, The Research Council of Norway, and Ministry of Health (República Checa)
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are a highly persistent, mobile, and bioaccumulative class of chemicals, of which emissions into the environment result in long-lasting contamination with high probability for causing adverse effects to human health and the environment. Within the European Biomonitoring Initiative HBM4EU, samples and data were collected in a harmonized way from human biomonitoring (HBM) studies in Europe to derive current exposure data across a geographic spread. We performed mixture risk assessments based on recent internal exposure data of PFASs in European teenagers generated in the HBM4EU Aligned Studies (dataset with N = 1957, sampling years 2014-2021). Mixture risk assessments were performed based on three hazard-based approaches: the Hazard Index (HI) approach, the sum value approach as used by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the Relative Potency Factor (RPF) approach. The HI approach resulted in the highest risk estimates, followed by the RPF approach and the sum value approach. The assessments indicate that PFAS exposure may result in a health risk in a considerable fraction of individuals in the HBM4EU teenager study sample, thereby confirming the conclusion drawn in the recent EFSA scientific opinion. This study underlines that HBM data are of added value in assessing the health risks of aggregate and cumulative exposure to PFASs, as such data are able to reflect exposure from different sources and via different routes. This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant agreement No 733032 HBM4EU (www.HBM4EU.eu), and received co-funding from the au thors’ organizations. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) has contributed to funding of the Norwegian Environmental Biobank (NEB), and the laboratory measurements have partly been funded by the Research Council of Norway through research projects (275903 and 268465). The PCB cohort (follow-up) received additional funding from the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic (program 07B0103). Sí