Within Europe a substantial amount of Human Biomonitoring data are collected in the field of environment and health and significant resources are devoted to this. However, the various programmes are not using the same methodological approach. It is therefore difficult to compare the data generated. Comparability of data would be very beneficial for European scientists, policymakers and citizens.

The European Commission announced to develop A COORDINATED EUROPEAN HUMAN BIOMONITORING APPROACH:

• to ensure better data comparability and accessibility within and between countries in order to develop more targeted and more cost-efficient EU environment and health policies;
• to ensure a better integration of information by bringing together available knowledge and actively promoting exchange of experiences between teams and countries (capacity building), which will enable a more effective use of resources by shared development of tools and strategies;
• to detect areas or population groups subject to elevated exposure and - by envisaging appropriate control measures - to better environmental equity

Given the complexity of the issues a STEP-BY-STEP approach has been set up:

The first step (2004-2006) consists of (1) developing comparable protocols addressing initiation, performance and follow-up of HBM activities, and harmonised data treatment; (2) developing appropriate tools for translation of HBM results into intervention strategies, including scenarios to integrate HBM results with environmental monitoring and health monitoring data; (3) developing appropriate tools for effective communication with policymakers and the public.
For this reason the EU Commission has launched the ESBIO project. The project team consist of nearly all members of the Implementation Group on Human Biomonitoring.

The second step (2006-...) is the EUROPEAN PILOT PROJECT, which is a "learning by doing tool". It aims to test out the developed coordinated approaches and to facilitate the establishment of collaboration networks and the sharing of methodologies. Furthermore, it will help to promote the idea of coordination HBM activities on European level.
Pending on the outcome of the Pilot Project the next step would be the elaboration of a full scale European HBM programme using comparable protocols, harmonised procedures, including integration scenarios and communication scenarios.