Reporting Cord Blood Contaminants to Mothers in the California Biomonitoring Program

Exposure assessment has shifted from pollutant monitoring in air, soil, and water toward an emphasis on personal exposure measurements and biomonitoring. These studies are conducted by academic scientists and also increasingly by advocacy and community groups, sometimes in collaboration with academic researchers. This shift, taken together with the paucity of health effect data for many of the pollutants studied, have raised new ethical and scientific issues related to reporting study results to participants and their communities.  California’s new biomonitoring law requires access to individual results for participants who want them.  This presentation will discuss the development of report-back methods that are scalable to a statewide program involving participants from diverse cultural backgrounds and literacy and numeracy levels.  It will describe pilot-testing of report-back materials for biomonitoring in mothers, their babies, and umbilical cord blood.