Impact/Purpose:

The objective of this research is to test out methods to obtain longitudinal activity data. These methods are intended to capture the daily and seasonal variability inherent in human activities that are not addressed to date in the human activity pattern studies that have been undertaken by NERL and others. (The current study data are contained in NERL's CHAD database.) Ultimately having the longitudinal data will allow exposure assessors to:

1. Provide estimates of the daily differences in the time spent, frequency of occurrence, and intake dose metrics for selected susceptible population groups in various locations (e.g., indoors residence, indoor work or school, indoor restaurant, indoor other, outdoor residence, outdoor other, and in-vehicle).

2. Provide estimates of daily differences in the time spent, frequency of occurrence, and intake dose metrics for selected susceptible subgroups defined by gender, age (especially the elderly), ethnicity, socio-economic status, season of the year, and region of the country.

Description:

Human activity/uptake rate data are necessary to estimate potential human exposure and intake dose to environmental pollutants and to refine human exposure models. Personal exposure monitoring studies have demonstrated the critical role that activities play in explaining and predicting variation in exposure and intake dose from all media. When the time period of interest becomes long, it is important to capture longitudinal activity data in order to model the day-to-day variability in human activities properly. While NERL has undertaken a number of activity surveys, and has developed the NHAPS (National Human Activity Pattern Survey), THERdbASE (Total Human Exposure Research Database) and CHAD (Consolidated Human Activity Database), none of these databases has more than 3 days of data available for any one person. This research is designed to obtain longitudinal activity data for the elderly, and other particularly susceptible groups, in order to better model daily/seasonal variability in human activities.

This task description discusses work in FYs 2000-2002 with the work being completed in FY 2002.

Record Details:

Record Type:PROJECT

Start Date:10/01/1999

Completion Date:09/01/2002

Record ID: 15832

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Project Information:

Progress :A task order contractual effort has been awarded to RTI to develop an instrument to capture longitudinal activity and activity-level data. A kick-off meeting of the project has been held.

Relevance :Exposure modeling requires data on human activities, and long-term models need longitudinal activity data. No one yet knows how changing activities over time will impact on human exposures, especially for susceptible subpopulations or groups with high exposures under the scenario or "snap shot" approach. To date, the longest record of activity data that is available to EPA is three days, and there is not much of that. In fact, there are no multi-day activity information available on a national basis. It is the intent of this project to test methods suitable for obtaining these data for use as inputs into exposure and intake dose models.

Clients :EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards; EPA and industry exposure assessors; ORD scientists and exposure/intake dose assessors.

Project IDs:

ID Code :5474

Project type :OMIS