Stationary sampling of ambient air in Europe - in the context of human exposure of chemicals through the environment

Beyond direct inhalation, the atmosphere has been shown to represent a key pathway for chemical entry via other parts of the physical environment as well as the human food-chain. Air monitoring data is therefore important for a complete understanding of human exposure to airborne chemicals. Such data are furthermore required for attempts to understand and evaluate relationships between emission sources and atmospheric concentrations - and thereby an integrated aspect of overall source-exposure relationships. In this talk, an introduction to existing databases on chemicals in ambient air will be given. The focus will highlight monitoring data and databases for selected persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and heavy metals in European background air. Using organic contaminants as examples, the merit and limitations of different techniques to measure spatial and temporal trends of chemicals in air and deposition will be discussed in terms of exposure relevance. Finally, opportunities of combining air monitoring data with exposure models to understand and predict human exposure via the environment will be assessed.