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Developing a rich definition of the person/residence to support person-oriented models of consumer product usage
Citation:
Price, P., G. Glen, H. Hubbard, K. Isaacs, AND K. Dionisio. Developing a rich definition of the person/residence to support person-oriented models of consumer product usage. 2017 Annual Meeting of the Society of Risk Analysis, Arlington, VA, December 10 - 14, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
The presentation will present a new tool in characterizing exposure to consumer products. The Residence Person Generator (RPGen), creates populations of simulated individuals with 90 characteristics. The characteristics are used to determine the likelihood that a person will use a product (e.g., only adults with a young child use a baby shampoo to wash the baby, and only individuals in homes with yards use a lawn fertilizer) and as inputs to exposure scenarios (e.g. body weight, breathing rates, and skin surface areas). The software is part of the HEM model of chemical exposures that occur during the use of consumer products.
Description:
Person Oriented Models (POMs) provide a basis for simulating aggregate chemical exposures in a population over time (Price and Chaisson, 2005). POMs assign characteristics to simulated individuals that are used to determine the individual’s probability of interacting with each of multiple sources of exposure and their resulting doses. The characteristics need to be internally consistent (e.g., physiology and exposure-related behaviors are consistent with the age and gender of the individual). We have developed software, the Residence Person Generator (RPGen), to create populations of simulated individuals with 90 characteristics. The interindividual variation in these characteristics are consistent with interindividual variation in the general U.S. population. Individuals are created by sampling data from four national surveys: Public Use Microdata Survey, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, American Housing Survey, and the Residential Energy Consumption Survey. The characteristics include: demographic information (e.g., age, gender, and ethnicity); physiology (e.g., weight, height, surface area, blood flows, and tissue compartment volumes); family structure (e.g., ages and genders of others living in the residence); and residential characteristics (e.g., household income, type and size of residence, and presence of a garden, lawn, or pool). RPGen is part of the Human Exposure Model, a POM to characterize aggregate chemical exposures from the use of consumer products. The characteristics are used to determine the likelihood that a person will use a product (e.g., only adults with a young child use a baby shampoo to wash the baby, and only individuals in homes with yards use a lawn fertilizer) and as inputs to exposure scenarios (e.g. body weight, breathing rates, and skin surface areas). Price, P. S. and Chaisson, C. F. 2005. A conceptual framework for modeling aggregate and cumulative exposures to chemicals. JESEE, 15(6), 473-481.
