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How Questionnaires and Multimedia Measurements collected in the U.S. EPA’s Observational Human Exposure Measurement Studies Inform Exposures
Citation:
Tulve, N., K. Isaacs, R. Williams, T. McCurdy, L. Phillips, C. Croghan, AND H. Ozkaynak. How Questionnaires and Multimedia Measurements collected in the U.S. EPA’s Observational Human Exposure Measurement Studies Inform Exposures. ISES 2014 Annual Meeting, Cincinnati, OH, October 12 - 16, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL) Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division (HEASD) conducts research in support of EPA mission to protect human health and the environment. HEASD research program supports Goal 1 (Clean Air) and Goal 4 (Healthy People) of EPA strategic plan. More specifically, our division conducts research to characterize the movement of pollutants from the source to contact with humans. Our multidisciplinary research program produces Methods, Measurements, and Models to identify relationships between and characterize processes that link source emissions, environmental concentrations, human exposures, and target-tissue dose. The impact of these tools is improved regulatory programs and policies for EPA.
Description:
In the last decade, the U.S. EPA has conducted and/or funded numerous observational humanexposure measurement studies where questionnaires were administered to the study participants in addition tothe collection of multimedia measurements. Questionnaire responses provide ancillary information with which tointerpret multimedia measurements and estimate human exposure. The types of information collected viaquestionnaire include personal (activities, location, diet and eating habits), housing (type, size, content,cleanliness), and community (location, services, roadways, green space) information. Examples of datacollected via questionnaires include activity pattern information detailing macro- and micro-activities which canbe used to better estimate aggregate and cumulative exposures; diet information on the types of foods eatenwhich helps to inform ingestion estimates; consumer product use information which helps to interpret residueconcentrations found in residential dust and air and to assess exposures from uses of these products.Additionally, publicly available information or information collected by other federal agencies are used formeasurement interpretation. These data can be used to support interpretation of measurement data, deriveexposure factors, and assist in model predictions and risk assessment/risk management decisions. Historically,questionnaires have been administered using pen and paper, whereas more recently, the U.S. EPA has beenexploring ways to administer questionnaires using electronic devices (computer, smartphone, tablet).Regardless of the method, data quality metrics such as response rate and range, compliance, and descriptivestatistics are used to explore the quality of the collected responses. This talk will further describe the types ofinformation collected, uses of the data for assessing exposure and risk, and provide a few specific examplesfrom studies conducted by the U.S. EPA.
URLs/Downloads:
https://www.intlexposurescience.org/Public/Annual_Meeting/PastMeetings/2014_Meeting.aspx