ABSTRACT
The use of biomarkers to evaluate pollution hazards has noticeably increased in the past few years and has attracted considerable attention from regulatory agencies at an international level as a new and potentially powerful, informative tool for detecting and documenting exposure to, and effects of, environmental contamination. The advantages of biomarker measurements in biological monitoring were described in Biomarkers of Environmental Contamination by J. F. McCarthy and L. R. Shugart and in Animal Biomarkers as Pollution Indicators by D. B. Peakall. The strategy of using biomarkers in the assessment of environmental health has been examined at a NATO workshop. An integrated monitoring program needs to consider responses at several levels of organization, ranging from biomarkers detected at the organismic level as well as population and community level indicators. Most of the biomarkers commonly used in biomonitoring programs require the analysis of tissues and organs — such as the liver, kidney, or brain — involving the destruction of living organisms.
