Community interest in environmental quality has never been greater. EPA Victoria and its partners have initiated a series of programs to better understand contaminants in urban environments through its GardenSafe program and a series of novel animal biomonitoring studies.
Here, we present the findings and practical applications of several biomonitoring programs that have sought to establish sources, pathways, and uptake of environmental contaminants into honey bees and wild and domestic birds. The species examined are globally distributed and commensal, providing sentinel markers for human exposure risk.
We assess the efficacy of animal biomonitoring for linking land use types and point source emissions spatially and temporally across urban environments. We examine the uptake and transfer of antimicrobial resistance genes and trace metals in European honey bees, lead exposure in domestic chickens, and the bioaccumulation of PFAS and lead in house sparrows.
The three studies we showcase demonstrate how environmental contaminants are remobilised in human populated environments and how exposure pathways and associated risks of harm can be better characterised using animal biomonitoring.
Through this work, EPA Victoria has incorporated several novel biomonitors into its research program and environmental assessment review processes to better understand if potentially toxic environmental contaminants represent a risk of harm to both the monitored species and humans.