Identifying Populations with Elevated PFAS Exposure by Targeted Serum Sample Pooling.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a focus of biomonitoring studies globally. In Australia, population PFAS serum concentrations have been determined since 2002 using pooled de-identified serum samples (n = 4800) collected from the population bi-annually, as a component of the Australian Human Biomonitoring (HBM) project. Locations of environmental PFAS contamination ('PFAS hotspots') are known to exist in Australia, but the extent of human exposure at many of these hotspots remains unknown. This study assesses if systematic use of geographical pooling of surplus pathology samples can be effective to identify if elevated PFAS exposure has occurred in populations residing near 'PFAS hotspots'. De-identified surplus pathology serum samples (n > 1800) were obtained and pooled from postcodes near three 'PFAS hotspots'. Samples were analyzed for PFAS and compared with the Australian HBM project. Selected PFAS were consistently higher compared to the Australian HBM project in pools from two of the three 'PFAS hotspots', suggesting that these populations may have experienced elevated exposure to PFAS. This study demonstrates that targeted serum pooling can be an effective tool for determining indications of population exposure to persistent chemicals in communities at risk. The technique has the potential to be used for rapid surveillance and as a trigger for further investigations of populations in proximity to sites with known contamination.

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Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12403-025-00712-5.