"bio-monitoring" bill signed on Friday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

SACRAMENTO - California will become the first US state to try to measure how its residents are absorbing chemicals from common products.

State health officers will use blood, urine, tissue, hair and breast milk samples collected voluntarily from a cross-section of California, taking into account ethnic, age, income and geographic differences, to gauge levels of exposure.

"There are literally thousands of chemicals being used in our everyday products in the United States in cleaning supplies, pesticides, cosmetics and more. It's important to know more about how those chemicals are building up in our bodies or how they may be affecting our health," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

"Bio-monitoring will do just that by shedding some light on our bodies, our environment and on public health," he added.

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