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CHILDREN'S TOTAL EXPOSURE TO PERSISTENT PESTICIDES AND OTHER PERSISTENT ORGANIC POLLUTANTS (CTEPP): AN OVERVIEW
Citation:
Wilson, N. K., R. Iachen, J. C. Chuang, S. M. Gordon, G F. Evans, P. Feder, W. Strauss, A H. Ozkaynak, AND L S. Sheldon. CHILDREN'S TOTAL EXPOSURE TO PERSISTENT PESTICIDES AND OTHER PERSISTENT ORGANIC POLLUTANTS (CTEPP): AN OVERVIEW. Presented at International Society of Exposure Analysis 2002 Conference, Vancouver, Canada, August 11-15, 2002.
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:
Young children may have greater exposures to pollutants in their everyday environments than do adults. Because of their immaturity, rapid development, and smaller body masses, children may also be more susceptible to the effects of these pollutants. Recent federal health initiatives promote research to fill in data gaps on young children's exposures. The Food Quality Protection Act specifically requires children's exposure assessments, including aggregate exposures from all sources, and prescribes additional protective assumptions in estimating children's exposures.
CTEPP has two major objectives: (1) to measure the total (aggregate) exposures of a small set of children, ages 18 months to 5 years, and their primary care givers in selected North Carolina and Ohio counties, to a suite of persistent pesticides and other persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in their everyday environments, and (2) to apportion the exposure pathways and identify hypotheses to be tested in future research. Several hypotheses will be tested in CTEPP, including whether the children's exposures are the same: (a) at home and daycare, (b) in low-income and middle-income households, (c) in urban and rural environments, (d) as those of adults in the same households, and (e) through different exposure pathways for different chemical classes of pollutants. Additionally, CTEPP will test whether (f) ingestion is a major pathway for exposures of the children and adults, and (g) diet is the major contributing factor to the children's ingestion exposures.
Data obtained in our earlier studies of young children's exposures to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and to persistent organic pollutants at home and at daycare are used to calculate sample sizes for the CTEPP study. A sample size of 128 children per group allows detection of a 50% difference between groups at 90% power, if the standard deviation of the log-transformed POP concentrations is 1.0. This is achieved through stratified random sampling of 260 participants. However, the CTEPP data cannot be generalized to larger populations of children.
Targeted pollutants are from these chemical classes: organochlorine, organophosphorus, and pyrethroid pesticides, as well as polychlorinated biphenyls, phenols, PAH, triazines, and phthalates. Sampled media are: air, house dust, soil, food preparation surface and floor wipes, duplicate diet, drinking water, hand wipes, and urine. Ancillary data include household characteristics, time-activity diaries, and videotapes of ~10% of the children. A comprehensive database is being developed. Future CTEPP work includes exposure calculations, statistical data analysis, hypothesis testing, and interpretation.
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.