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A META-ANALYSIS OF CHILDREN'S HAND-TO-MOUTH FREQUENCY DATA FOR ESTIMATING NON-DIETARY INGESTION EXPOSURE
Citation:
XUE, J., V. G. ZARTARIAN, J. MOYA, N. C. FREEMAN, P. BEAMER, K. BLACK, N. S. TULVE, AND S. L. SHALAT. A META-ANALYSIS OF CHILDREN'S HAND-TO-MOUTH FREQUENCY DATA FOR ESTIMATING NON-DIETARY INGESTION EXPOSURE. RISK ANALYSIS. Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA, 27(2):411-420, (2007).
Impact/Purpose:
The overall goal of this task is to evaluate, refine, and disseminate a peer-reviewed state-of-the science probabilistic model for improving estimates of human exposure and dose to multimedia, multipathway pollutants. The primary objectives of this research are the following:
Evaluate and refine the dietary (food and drinking water) exposure module and incorporate it into the SHEDS-Multimedia code.
Evaluate and refine the residential fugacity-based source-to-concentration module and incorporate it into the SHEDS-Multimedia code.
Improve the simulation of longitudinal exposure.
Develop and evaluate procedures for modeling multiple pollutants simultaneously.
Complete the SHEDS-Multimedia version 3 (aggregate) model with interface and documentation; evaluate with available data sets.
Peer review, publish, and make available the SHEDS-Multimedia model and model components.
Description:
Because of their mouthing behaviors, children have a higher potential for exposure to available chemicals through the non-dietary ingestion route; thus, frequency of hand-to-mouth activity is an important variable for exposure assessments. Such data are limited and difficult to collect. Few published studies report such information, and the studies that have been conducted used different data collection approaches (e.g., videography versus real-time observation), data analysis and reporting methods, ages of children, locations, and even definitions of mouthing. For this paper, hand-to-mouth frequency data were gathered from 9 available studies representing 429 subjects and more than 2000 hours of behavior observation. A meta-analysis was conducted to study differences in hand-to-mouth frequency based on study, age group, gender, and location (indoor vs. outdoor), to fit variability and uncertainty distributions that can be used in probabilistic exposure assessments, and to identify any data gaps.
