Biomonitoring using accessible human cells for exposure and health risk assessment

A major goal for genetic toxicologist is to provide precise information on exposure and health risk assessment for effective prevention of health prob lems. A frequently used approach for population study has been to utilize r eadily available blood cells (lymphocytes and red blood cells) as sentinel cell types to detect biological effects from exposure and to provide early warning signals for health risk. However, such approach still cannot be use d reliably for developing strategies in risk assessment and disease prevent ion. It is possible that other available cell types which are more represen tative of the target cells for disease may be used to overcome the deficien cy. In this report, the use of non-blood cells for biomonitoring is briefly reviewed. Their usefulness in certain exposure condition is highlighted an d their effectiveness in documenting exposure compared with other cell type s such as the traditional blood cells is presented. It is obvious that the decision in using these non-blood cells in biomonitoring is based on the ex posure condition and the experimental design. Nevertheless, monitoring stud ies using non-blood cells should be encouraged with emphasis on providing d ose-response information, comparative response with other cell types and ef fectiveness for health risk assessment. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.