California Department of Public Health Funding

Funding overview

2014-2019

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH), Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), and Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) collectively developed and implemented the Biomonitoring California Program.

Two state laboratories, the CDPH Environmental Health Laboratory and the DTSC Environmental Chemistry Laboratory, provide analytical expertise and capacity for measuring environmental chemicals; these include metals, pesticides, parabens, perchlorate, bisphenol A (BPA), per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and organophosphate flame-retardants (OPFRs).

The Biomonitoring California program received funding from CDC in 2014 to assess environmental contaminants across the state. The 2014-2019 funding cycle included these studies:

• The Biomonitoring Exposures Study, a targeted study in partnership with the Kaiser Permanente-Northern California members (residing in the Central Valley), to assess exposure to pesticides, PFAS, phthalates, PBDEs, BPA, and metals
• The Foam Replacement Environmental Exposure Study, to compare the levels of PBDEs and OPFRs in participants before and after foam furniture replacement
• The Asian/Pacific Islander Community Exposures Project, to assess exposure to metals and PFAS in 200 Asian residents of the San Francisco Bay Area
• The Measuring Analytes in Maternal Serum, to assess exposure to metals, PFAS, PBDEs, PCBS, and OCPs during pregnancy using archived maternal serum specimens
• The California Regional Exposure Study, to assess exposure to metals and PFAS with regionally representative sampling across the entire state of California

2009-2014

The California Department of Public Health set forth the following goals to build or expand its biomonitoring program:

• Expand current laboratory capability and capacity to assess human exposures to environmental chemicals of greatest concern to Californians
• Provide laboratory support for targeted public health and exposure investigations, epidemiologic investigations, and population-based biomonitoring surveillance
• Conduct targeted exposure investigations in collaboration with communities and stakeholder groups
• Assess the effectiveness of state public health actions to reduce exposures over time to specific chemicals of concern to Californians
• Integrate biomonitoring findings into the development and implementation of chemical use policy for California under the Green Chemistry Initiative.