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Relationships between environmental concentrations and measured urinary biomarker levels
Citation:
TULVE, N. S., J. H. Ross, P. P. EGEGHY, C. Lunchick, D. Barnekow, AND J. H. Driver. Relationships between environmental concentrations and measured urinary biomarker levels. Presented at 2008 ACS National Meeting, Philadelphia,PA, August 17 - 21, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory′s (NERL) Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division (HEASD) conducts research in support of EPA′s mission to protect human health and the environment. HEASD′s research program supports Goal 1 (Clean Air) and Goal 4 (Healthy People) of EPA′s strategic plan. More specifically, our division conducts research to characterize the movement of pollutants from the source to contact with humans. Our multidisciplinary research program produces Methods, Measurements, and Models to identify relationships between and characterize processes that link source emissions, environmental concentrations, human exposures, and target-tissue dose. The impact of these tools is improved regulatory programs and policies for EPA.
Description:
Observational exposure measurement studies may collect a plethora of information, including environmental (indoor and outdoor air, transferable residues, dust, soil), biological (urine, saliva), and personal (cotton garments, duplicate diet) samples, as well as activity patterns and questionnaire information. Data from selected studies were analyzed individually and then combined and analyzed collectively to evaluate the relationships between various environmental, personal, and biological concentrations for selected pesticides and their corresponding urinary metabolites. In this presentation, observations will be made on the relationships between the environmental concentrations and the measured urinary metabolite concentrations for the individual and combined analyses. Individual and combined data were evaluated using regression models. Preliminary data analyses indicated associations between analyte concentrations on socks data and measured urinary 3-phenoxybenzoic acid (3-PBA) concentrations (r2 = 0.95) and the indoor air data and measured urinary 3-PBA concentrations (r2 = 0.35) for a subset of the individually analyzed data (n = 9). Included in this presentation will be a discussion of the challenges often encountered when interpreting environmental and biological data, including variations in sample collection strategies, parent pesticide half-life, and the presence of pesticide metabolites in environmental media. We conclude by comparing our observations to the NHANES (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) and GerES (German Environmental Survey) population studies. (Disclaimer: Although this work was reviewed by EPA and approved for publication, it may not necessarily reflect official Agency policy.)