On 5 June 2024, the Department of Environment & Spatial Development of the Flemish government organised the conference ‘Human Biomonitoring and PARC: From regional to international level' as part of the European Presidency. Just over 160 national and international professionals gathered in the impressive event hall of Maison de la Poste in Brussels, from 30 different countries. During 13 plenary sessions, insights were given and interesting discussions were held around national initiatives of Human BioMonitoring (HBM) in different countries, HBM4EU and the PARC project (Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals), the applications and integration of human biomonitoring in research.
Human biomonitoring is already currently happening at different levels and is indispensable within different policy frameworks such as the European Zero Pollution Action Plan. During this event, the added value of humane biomonitoring was explained ranging from the regional to international level. With speakers from Norway, Canada, Lithuania and, of course, Belgium, among others, and from industry, governments and the European Commission, it was a varied day. A visual harvester impressively summarised each presentation visually in an understandable and visually attractive way.
Because of the link with the PARC project (Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals), a back-to-back closed expert meeting took place on Tuesday June 4th, with representatives of 26 participating European countries.
The 5 June congress kicked off with a video message from Minister Demir to welcome everyone. Among many other speakers, Jos Bessems (VITO, Belgium) presented the Research infrastructure for EnvIRonmental Exposure assessmeNt in Europe (EIRENE) speaking about EIRENE’s long-term effort to develop the global community and the infrastructural landscape for environmental exposure assessment.
Resource: https://omgeving.vlaanderen.be/nl/conference-human-biomonitoring-and-parc-from-regional-to-international-level-0, adjusted
The EIRENE IMP project was officially launched during a two-day hybrid kick-off meeting held on 25–26 June 2026 at the Technology Centre Prague. The opening event brought together project partners, representatives of national nodes of the EIRENE RI research infrastructure, and project managers from the beneficiary and the European Commission.
