THE RELATION BETWEEN BIOMARKERS AND OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE TO POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC COMPOUNDS

Recently a paper was published in which we reviewed a number of studies involving occupational surveys, where both the external polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) exposures and one or more biomarkers were quantitatively monitored. As part of that review a statistical analysis of the results of these studies was performed, which revealed that only urinary 1-hydroxypyrene (1OHPy) and possibly chromosome aberrations (CA) showed a correlation with PAH exposure, while unexpectedly, DNA adducts did not. Another observation was that although in controlled laboratory experiments good correlations have been found to occur between DNA adducts and exposure doses to polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs), such a correlation was not found in the human occupational exposure studies reviewed. Also the analyses showed that sister chromatid exchanges (SCE) and micronuclei (MN) exhibited a very weak or an absence of a correlation, respectively, with external PAH exposure. The subject of this article is an attempt to explain: (a) why the levels of only some biomarkers correlate with PAH exposures and (b) the differences in results between controlled animal experiments and human monitoring studies.