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EXPOSURES AND HEALTH OF FARM WORKER CHILDREN IN CALIFORNIA
Citation:
Whitaker, D A. AND A. Bradman. EXPOSURES AND HEALTH OF FARM WORKER CHILDREN IN CALIFORNIA. Presented at National Children's Study Meetings, Baltimore, MD, December 16-18, 2002.
Impact/Purpose:
1. To identify those pesticides, pathways, and activities that represent the highest potential exposures to children;
2. To determine the factors that influence pesticide exposures to children;
3. To develop methods for measuring multimedia exposures to children, including methods that account for important activities that take place in home, school, and day care settings;
4. To generate data on multimedia pesticide concentrations, pesticide biomarkers, and exposure factors that can be used as inputs to aggregate exposure models for children.
Description:
The EPA STAR Program Center of Excellence in Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research at the University of California at Berkeley is currently conducting exposure and health studies for children of farm workers in the Salinas Valley of California. The Exposure Measurement and Analysis Branch in the U.S. EPA National Exposure Research Laboratory has provided additional funding through the National Children's Study to monitor pesticide exposures of twenty children ages 6 to 24 months in their home environment. Samples collected include indoor and outdoor air, house dust, surface wipes, toy wipes, urine, duplicate diet foods, and leftover handled foods. Estimates of dermal exposures will be estimated from analysis of union suits and socks worn by the children. Time and activity data for the 24 hour monitoring period are collected for each participant. Questionnaires designed to obtain general information on environmental exposures as well as food related exposures are also administered.
Results and lessons learned from this study will be used to develop questions, measurement methods, and models that can be used to cost effectively assess exposures to chemical agents for participants in the National Children's Study.
This work has been funded in part by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Grant # R826709B. It has been subjected to Agency review and approved for publication. Mention of trade names of commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.