[International applications and experiences in biological monitoring: state of the art].

Biological monitoring (BM) represents one of the most dynamic areas of research in occupational health today. From a few tens of articles published yearly in the 70s and 80s, there are now several thousand papers published in the peer review literature each year and the trend is still growing. BM was originally used to assess exposure, effects and susceptibility to occupational agents, but it has been now extended to environmental chemical risk assessment, as well as to several other biomedical sciences, such as epidemiology, tumor science, molecular biology, to mention just a few. The aim of the present paper is to consider new experiences in the use of BM at the international level and to discuss the contribution that these approaches may provide to develop new diagnostic and preventive tools in occupational and environmental health.