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Applying Bioethical Principles to Place-Based Communities and Cultural Group Protections: The Case of Biomonitoring Results Communication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Dianne Quigley
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Extract

Individual research protections provided by bioethical principles can be extended to group protections, particularly for place-based (geographic) communities and cultural groups who may share a common harm or burden. In this article, an argument is made for the need to consider the group conditions of individual research subjects in the ethics of individual report-backs of human biomonitoring results. Human biomonitoring, the measuring of concentration of chemicals or their metabolites in blood, urine, breast milk, hair, and other biological samples, can provide an assessment of an individual's exposure to a chemical(s) and can integrate exposures from multiple pathways and sources. Biomonitoring studies have been increasing in the past decade for such purposes as measuring the levels of chemicals that are ingested by members of the general population and at what concentrations, to determine if exposure levels are higher in some groups vs. others, to track temporal trends to establish reference ranges for chemical exposures, and to investigate an association with health.

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Independent
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , Summer 2012 , pp. 348 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2012

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