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THE EPA NATIONAL EXPOSURE RESEARCH LABORATORY CHILDREN'S PESTICIDE EXPOSURE MEASUREMENT PROGRAM
Citation:
Fortmann, R C., L S. Sheldon, E A. CohenHubal, M K. Morgan, D M. Stout II, K W. Thomas, N S. Tulve, AND D A. Whitaker. THE EPA NATIONAL EXPOSURE RESEARCH LABORATORY CHILDREN'S PESTICIDE EXPOSURE MEASUREMENT PROGRAM. Presented at Indoor Air 2002 The 9th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, Monterey, CA, June 30-July 5, 2002.
Impact/Purpose:
1. To identify those pesticides, pathways, and activities that represent the highest potential exposures to children;
2. To determine the factors that influence pesticide exposures to children;
3. To develop methods for measuring multimedia exposures to children, including methods that account for important activities that take place in home, school, and day care settings;
4. To generate data on multimedia pesticide concentrations, pesticide biomarkers, and exposure factors that can be used as inputs to aggregate exposure models for children.
Description:
The U.S. EPA's National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL) conducts research in support of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) of 1996. FQPA requires that children's risks to pesticide exposures be considered during the tolerance-setting process. The Act requires exposure assessments to be conducted for all potential sources, routes and pathways, not just dietary intake. It also requires that exposure assessments use high quality and high quantity exposure data or models based on exposure factors generated from reliable data.
Data on children's exposures and activities are currently very limited and insufficient to support quantitative assessments that do not rely heavily on major default assumptions as substitutes for missing information. Studies are required for all ages of children, but especially for very young children, to characterize indoor pesticide sources, exposure pathways, the impact of children's activities on exposure, and children's aggregate exposures to pesticides by all routes and pathways.
The goal of the NERL program is to develop and evaluate protocols for assessing children's aggregate exposure to pesticides, and to conduct fields studies to collect data required to reduce the reliance on default assumptions in development of quantitative exposure assessments. To address this goal, studies are being conducted in the following areas:
o Spatial and temporal distribution of pesticide residues in indoor environments (residences, daycares, schools),
o Pesticide use patterns indoors,
o Dermal exposure measurements using microactivity and macroactivity assessment approaches,
o Indirect ingestion exposure measurements,
o Microenvironment/macroactivity patterns for children,
o Protocol and methods development for aggregate exposure measurements, and
o Field studies to verify assessment methods and collect exposure concentration and exposure factor data.
This paper presents an overview of the NERL children's exposure measurement program, the goals, technical approach, descriptions of on-going and planned studies, and highlights of study results.
This work has been funded wholly or in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under contract nos. 68-D-99-011 to Battelle and 68-D-99-012 to Research Triangle Institute. It has been subjected to Agency review and approved for publication.