Continued: Biomonitoring: Has pollution spread to body?

Adopting a style of research that has proved controversial in other states, Minnesota health officials are poised to test for arsenic in 100 children and for chemicals formerly made by 3M in 200 adults.

The 2008 studies will be part of a $2 million experiment in biomonitoring, which collects human tissue, hair, blood or urine to look for harmful contaminants.

The purpose is to learn what substances are actually in human bodies, rather than merely in the air, water or soil that pollution control officials typically measure.

The Legislature recently authorized the research in response to discoveries this year of widespread industrial pollution in parts of the Twin Cities.

The biomonitoring research is also aimed at assessing environmental risks in certain communities or populations where pollution has been detected.

While the testing will only use volunteers, biomonitoring has met with controversy in other states because of questions about the meaning of informed consent, how the data will be used, and whether it will be kept private.

"It's obvious to me that we're going to do more and more of this personalized medicine and risk analysis," said John Adgate, associate professor of environmental health science at the University of Minnesota.

"It has great promise but there's a lot of potential bumps in the road."

Two years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency canceled a planned biomonitoring project to study pesticides and other household chemicals in infants and young children in Florida. The agency's own scientists raised concerns about the industry's funding of the project and whether the plan would exploit poor families by paying each of them nearly $1,000 to participate.

Payments are not an issue in the upcoming Minnesota studies, but there are questions about who will have access to the research data, whether the samples will be retained, and what the participants can expect to learn from the testing.

"You can throw big numbers of chemicals in front of someone's face, but in truth it may actually mean nothing in terms of effects on a person," said Twila Brase, president of the Citizens' Council on Health Care, a nonprofit group based in St. Paul.

But Brase worries that if a person is identified as exposed to chemicals, it might be blown out of proportion or misused in some other way. "If you come out with a study and 80 percent of children have some arsenic levels, that could incite the public to unnecessary concern and could push a policy agenda that may limit progress in this country," she said.

Adgate said that communicating results is only one of the challenges involved with biomonitoring. "We have exquisite ability to measure very small amounts of chemicals in the environment and in our bodies, but our ability to explain what those very low levels mean has not kept up with our ability to measure things," he said.

Nevertheless, biomonitoring has served an important function in the past and is needed in the future, according to a 2006 National Research Council report. Measuring lead in human blood and comparing that to lead in the air eventually resulted in a ban on leaded gasoline and a resulting drop in lead pollution, according to the report. Similarly, testing for a tobacco-related chemical called cotinine in blood led to measures to reduce secondhand smoke, researchers noted.

The chemicals to be studied in Minnesota might be more difficult because less is known about some of them. In addition to arsenic and former 3M chemicals, the Legislature also authorized the health department to study mercury in another 100 individuals, and a yet-to-be determined chemical in a fourth group. The law provides $2 million for the research during the next two years, and asks for recommendations about whether additional biomonitoring should occur in the state. California passed the nation's first biomonitoring bill in 2006.

Jean Johnson, environmental epidemiologist for the Minnesota Department of Health, said that officials cannot simply initiate a study when it involves human testing. Researchers must present their plans to a scientific advisory panel that oversees their work, she said.

Adgate is one of 13 members of that group, which also includes scientists from companies, environmental groups and government agencies. Beyond that, said Johnson, any federal study with human subjects requires close review by experts on an "institutional review board."

The panel and the board also check to be sure that study plans comply with laws protecting individual privacy, said John Linc Stine, environmental health division director at the Minnesota Department of Health. Researchers typically "de-identify" data as quickly as possible after they are collected, he said, after individuals are provided with their specific test results.

One of the trickiest components of human testing is developing consent forms, said Johnson, which inform participants about numerous details before they decide whether to sign up for a study.

"Anyone who agrees to participate would do so fully understanding how the data are being collected, what it's being collected for, how the information will be used, and how samples will be stored and for how long," she said.

Staff librarian John Wareham contributed to this report. Tom Meersman • 612-673-7388