You are here:
Child environmental exposures to water and sand at the beach: Findings from studies of over 68,000 subjects at 12 beaches
Citation:
Deflorio-Barker, S., B. Arnold, E. Sams, A. Dufour, J. Colford, S. Weisberg, K. Schiff, AND Tim Wade. Child environmental exposures to water and sand at the beach: Findings from studies of over 68,000 subjects at 12 beaches. Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology . Nature Publishing Group, London, Uk, 28(2):93-100, (2018).
Impact/Purpose:
This analysis aimed to assess exposures at the beach among adults and children and to estimate the total volume of water swallowed among beachgoers. Our findings indicate that children are more likely to engage in activities associated with greater exposure, such as spending more time in the water and having more contact with algae and sand compared to adults. The results of our bootstrap simulation suggest children, especially those aged 6-12, swallow a greater amount of water compared to adults over 35, and that male children swallow a greater amount of water compared to females. Given that epidemiological results demonstrate that more children are more likely to become ill following swimming in recreational water compared to adults (Arnold et al 2016), the results presented here suggest that behaviors among children may potentially put them at higher risk of becoming ill following swimming at beaches. In addition, by integrating the amount of time spent in the water with the rate of swallowing water, we were able to identify a significantly increased water ingestion rate among males, with male children potentially the highest exposed group based on volume of water swallowed per event. Therefore, future QMRA studies should consider these differences in exposure among adults and children when estimating risk among surface water recreators.
Description:
Swimming and recreating in lakes, oceans, and rivers is common, yet the literature suggests children may be at greater risk of illness following such exposures. These effects might be due to differences in immunity or differing behavioral factors such as poorer hygiene, longer exposures to, and greater ingestion of potentially contaminated water and sand. We pooled data from 12 prospective cohorts (n=68,685) to examine exposures to potentially contaminated media such as beach water and sand among children compared with adults, and conducted a simulation using self-reported time spent in the water and volume of water swallowed per minute by age to estimate the total volume of water swallowed per swimming event by age category. Children aged 4-7 and 8-12 years had the highest exposures to water, sand, and algae compared with other age groups. Based on our simulation, we found that children (6-12 years) swallow a median of 36 ml (90th percentile=·150 ml), whereas adults aged ≥35 years swallow 9 ml (90th percentile=64 ml) per swimming event, with male children swallowing a greater amount of water compared with females. These estimates may help to reduce uncertainty surrounding routes and durations of recreational exposures and can support the development of chemical and microbial risk assessments.
