There are only a few defined critical threshold values concerning blood levels of chemical contamination. Current human biomonitoring values defined by the German HBM-Commission are based on epidemiological studies and animal experiments and are defined as the concentration below which no adverse health effects are expected. For PFOA and PFOS, these values are 2 ng mL -1 and 5 ng mL -1 , respectively . The reference values were exceeded in the plasma samples from multiple infants. Although no maximum recommended dosages of parabens in blood have yet been proposed using epidemiological data; in a recent ExWAS 10 , Agier et al. concluded that paraben exposure is a health risk during early life. Of five identified parabens, propyl-, methyl-, and ethylparaben were contaminations in all premature babies. While previous assessments focused almost exclusively on urinary analyses of phthalates , ubiquitous contamination of blood was also observed in our data. As mentioned above, this matrix may be more amenable to elucidating the acute biologically-active burden of such short-lived compounds that causes a negative outcome. Consequently, quantitative data from blood analyses may also be more suitable for the discovery of associated biological effects (i.e., inflammation, oxidative stress, endocrine disruption) and the subsequent proposal of reference values.