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CTEPP: THE DATABASE
Citation:
Morgan, M K., J. C. Chuang, C. Lyu, AND N K. Wilson. CTEPP: THE DATABASE. Presented at 11th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Exposure Analysis, Charleston, SC, November 4-8, 2001.
Impact/Purpose:
The overall objectives of CTEPP were to measure the aggregate exposures of approximately 260 preschool children and their adult caregivers to low levels of a suite of pesticides and organic pollutants that the children may encounter in their everyday environments, and to apportion the routes of exposure and estimate the relative contributions of each route.
Description:
The research study, Children's Total Exposure to Persistent Pesticides and Other Persistent Organic Pollutants, (CTEPP), examines the exposures of approximately 260 preschool children between the ages of 18 months and 5 years and their primary adult caregivers to pollutants commonly found in their everyday environments. The major objectives of this three-year pilot study are to quantify children's aggregate exposures, apportion the exposure pathways, identify the important exposure media, and formulate the important hypotheses for future testing. Participants are recruited from randomly selected day care centers and homes in six North Carolina and six Ohio counties. Monitoring is performed during 48-hr sampling periods at the children's day care centers and homes. Samples are being analyzed for over 40 persistent pesticides and other persistent organic pollutants that children may contact in their daily surroundings. Samples collected over the 48-hour period include food, beverages, drinking water, urine, indoor and outdoor air, hand wipes, indoor floor dust, play area soil, dislodgeable pesticide residues, smooth floor wipes, and food preparation surface wipes. Total exposures are determined for the preschool children through environmental sampling, time-activity diaries, food diaries and questionnaires. In addition, 10% of the preschool children are videotaped for about 2 hours at homes in Ohio to supplement the activity diaries and observations. Potential doses (aggregate exposure/kg body weight) will be estimated from the multimedia and activity data, and absorbed dose will be estimated when possible from the urine data. All of this information is being incorporated into the CTEPP database. This valuable database will be used to quantify the total exposures of these children and their primary caregivers to pollutants in their everyday environments. The data will also be used to apportion the dermal, ingestion, and inhalation exposure pathways of these preschool children and their caregivers to several classes of pollutants (pesticides, phthalate esters, phenols, polychlorinated biphenyls, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). Currently, field sampling in North Carolina is complete, and the respective portion of the database is expected to be finished in late 2001. Field activities in Ohio are on-going with an anticipated completion date by December 2001. When completed, this database will be one of the largest resources for characterizing young children's exposures to pollutants in their everyday environments. However, because of the small sample size of this research study, the results cannot be generalized beyond the sampled population.
This work has been funded wholly or in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under contract #68-D-99-011 to Battelle. It has been subjected to Agency review and approved for publication.