US EPA

Statistical population based estimates of water ingestion play a vital role in many types of exposure and risk analysis. A significant large scale analysis of water ingestion by the population of the United States was recently completed and is documented in the report titled ”Estimated per capita Water Ingestion and Body Weight in the United States - an Update”, July, 2004 (on the US EPA web site at https://www.epa.gov/ost/drinking/percapita//2004.pdf). This report contains extensive analyses and tables of data obtained from the Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals (CSFII). The CSFII is a nationwide, complex multi-stage probability sample survey of food and beverage intake in the United States conducted by the US Department of Agriculture. The data from the CSFII are a source of extensive information on water ingestion by the US population. In addition, respondents to the CSFII report body weight so the data may also be used to estimate national level distributions of body weight. Previous, related work based on earlier CSFII and using similar methodology has been reviewed and approved by the EPA Science Advisory Board [“Estimated Water Ingestion in the United States”, April, 2000 (US EPA web site at https://www.epa.gov/ost/drinking/percapita//Text.pdf)]

The objective of this work is to (1) perform additional work on water ingestion and body weight distributions in order to generate results using new, smaller age categories for children and integrate these results with previously obtained results and (2) support the development of manuscripts that will describe portions of the work in a form suitable for submission to a journal.