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This report describes the development and the performance characteristics of the methods of analysis for lead in blood and for cadmium and mercury in urine. The methods are designed to assess samples of segments of the Dutch population not specifically exposed to these analytes. For lead and cadmium samples are wet pressurized digested with nitric acid at 150 degrees C and then assayed for these elements with flameless atomic absorption spectroscopy and Zeeman background correction after atomisation of the sample solution from a L'vov platform ; Annexes I and II. Validation of the lead in blood procedure was done by assaying reference material CRM 194 "Lyophilized Bovine Blood". For cadmium in urine the reference material "Kontroll-Urin for Metalle 2" was used and recovery experiments were carried out for validation. The limit of determination for lead is 8 mug/l for a test portion of 1 ml and for cadmium in urine 0.045 mug/l when 3 ml is used for analysis. Sample preparation by wet pressurized digestion with nitric acid, now at 120 degrees C, also is used to determine mercury in urine. The resulting test solution is assayed for mercury by cold vapor atomic absorption spectroscopy ; Annex III. Validation of the method was done by recovery experiments. For a test portion of 4 g urine the limit of determination is 0.03 mug/kg.