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IMPORTANT PATHWAYS AND FACTORS FOR ASSESSING CHILDREN'S RESIDENTIAL EXPOSURE TO PESTICIDES
Citation:
CohenHubal, E A., J M. Burke, M J. Zufall, A H. Ozkaynak, AND L S. Sheldon. IMPORTANT PATHWAYS AND FACTORS FOR ASSESSING CHILDREN'S RESIDENTIAL EXPOSURE TO PESTICIDES. Presented at ISEE/ISEA '99 Conference, Athens, Greece, September 5-8, 1999.
Description:
The Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 requires a reasonable certainty that no harm will result to infants and children from aggregate exposure to a pesticide's residues. To assess aggregate exposure, important pathways must be identified and quantified. In this study, currently available data were used to identify potentially important exposure pathways and the factors to which the exposure assessments are most sensitive.
Data available to assess children's residential exposures to pesticides were reviewed. An example pesticide was used to systematically explore and compare exposure pathways and factors. Potential for exposure and uncertainty associated with exposure pathways were evaluated using two approaches. In the first case, where enough data was available for given factors: uncertainty and variability were characterized, sensitivity of a screening level exposure assessment to the factors was determined, and the relative importance of pathways described by these data was evaluated. In the second case, where the data were sparse, bounding estimates or currently applied default values were used to identify factors and pathways that are potentially important.
Pesticide exposure assessments performed using current default assumptions show that dermal contact and non-dietary ingestion are potentially important pathways for infants and children. However, due to significant data gaps these pathways are currently difficult to quantify. Future research should be focused on collecting data to better quantify these pathways.
This paper has been reviewed in accordance with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's peer and administrative review policies and approved for presentation and publication. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.