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AN OBSERVATIONAL STUDY OF THE POTENTIAL EXPOSURES OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN TO PENTACHLOROPHENOL, BISPHENOL-A, AND NONYLPHENOL AT HOME AND DAYCARE
Citation:
WILSON, N. K., J. C. CHUANG, M. K. MORGAN, B. LORDO, AND L. S. SHELDON. AN OBSERVATIONAL STUDY OF THE POTENTIAL EXPOSURES OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN TO PENTACHLOROPHENOL, BISPHENOL-A, AND NONYLPHENOL AT HOME AND DAYCARE. ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH. Academic Press Incorporated, Orlando, FL, 103(1):9-20, (2007).
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:
The Children's Total Exposure to Persistent Pesticides and Other Persistent Organic Pollutants (CTEPP) study investigated the potential exposures of 257 preschool children, ages 1 1/2 to 5 yr, and their primary adult caregivers to more than 50 anthropogenic chemicals. Field sampling took place in selected counties in North Carolina (NC) and Ohio (OH) in 2000-2001. Over a 48-h period in each child's daycare center and/or home, food, beverages, indoor air, outdoor air, house dust, soil, participants' hand surfaces and urine were sampled. Additional samples - transferable residues, food preparation surface wipes, and hard floor surface wipes - were collected in the approximately 13% of the homes that had pesticide applications within the seven days prior to field sampling.
Three phenols were among the measured chemicals: pentachlorophenol, bisphenol A [2,2 bis(4-hydroxyphenyl)propane], and nonylphenol (4-n-nonylphenol). Nonylphenol was detected in less than 11% of the samples in any medium. Among samples that were collected at all participants' homes and daycare centers, pentachlorophenol was detected in >50% of indoor air, outdoor air, house dust, and urine samples; bisphenol A was detected in >50% of indoor air, hand wipe, solid food, and liquid food samples.
The concentrations of the phenols in the sampled media were measured, and estimates of the children's potential exposures and potential absorbed doses resulting from intake through the inhalation, dietary ingestion, and indirect ingestion routes of exposure were estimated. The children's potential exposures to pentachlorophenol were predominantly through inhalation: 78% in NC and 90% in OH. In contrast, their potential exposures to bisphenol-A were predominantly through dietary ingestion: 99%, for children in both states. The children's estimated exposures to pentachlorophenol, calculated from the amounts excreted in their urine, exceeded their estimated maximum potential intake, calculated from the multimedia pentachlorophenol concentrations, by a factor greater than 10. This inconsistency for pentachlorophenol highlights the need for further research on the environmental pathways and routes of pentachlorophenol exposure, investigation of possible exposures to other compounds that could be metabolized to pentachlorophenol, and on the human absorption, metabolism, and excretion of this phenol over time periods longer than 48 hours.