Abstract |
Children are widely acknowledged to be more vulnerable than adults to many environmental health hazards, including pesticides, because they are more exposed, and because they may have elevated susceptibility. The effect of relatively low levels of pesticide exposure in children is an area of great scientific uncertainty and has, therefore, become the focus of substantial research and regulatory activities. The work of the Pesticides in Young Children Border States Program to identify the major exposure risk factors for intervention requires studying children across the exposure measurement distribution, especially those with higher exposure measurements. Questions that could be used for exposure classification as a prescreening tool would help produce either an enriched population (i.e., a larger percentage of individuals with higher exposure levels) or would eliminate individuals with lower exposure levels from further review. Considerable savings in time and money may then be realized in selecting the desired population for a study. The objective of this project is to identify questions that indicate a higher likelihood of predicting a child's level of exposure to pesticides as input to future study designs. This report reviews the state of the science in relating questionnaire responses to environmental and biological measurements, primarily for children, based on results and data from previous exposure studies. A two-part approach was used for this evaluation: a literature review of previous exposure studies to summarize the existence of such quantitative and qualitative relationships, and an analysis of Phase II of the Pesticide Exposure and Health Effects on Children Initiative (Yuma Study), which contained questionnaires and measurements. |