The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is a program of studies designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States (linkEXIT). As part of the NHANES, the CDC monitors biomarkers of chemical exposure (chiefly metabolites) in the blood and urine to quantify the levels of chemical compounds present in U.S. residents (linkEXIT). Each two-year study cycle comprises approximately 10,000 individuals, with exposure biomarker data for any given chemical available from only a subset of roughly 1/3 of the individuals in the study. In the 2014 publication “High Throughput Heuristics for Prioritizing Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals” (linkEXIT) EPA scientists inferred steady state exposure rates (mg/kg bodyweight) for 106 chemicals from the NHANES urine samples. This figure is an example of the information available for one of those 106 chemicals.
