You are here:
CHILDREN'S AGGREGATE EXPOSURE TO POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC HYDROCARBONS (PAHS)
Citation:
Chuang, J. C., N. K. Wilson, S. M. Gordon, M K. Morgan, AND L S. Sheldon. CHILDREN'S AGGREGATE EXPOSURE TO POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC HYDROCARBONS (PAHS). Presented at Environmental & Occupational Seminar Series, Ottawa, Canada, October 15, 2003.
Impact/Purpose:
The overall objectives of CTEPP were to measure the aggregate exposures of approximately 260 preschool children and their adult caregivers to low levels of a suite of pesticides and organic pollutants that the children may encounter in their everyday environments, and to apportion the routes of exposure and estimate the relative contributions of each route.
Description:
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been frequently detected at children's homes and day care centers and may pose health concerns due to their carcinogenicity. Most PAHs have been persistent indoors and outdoors, therefore, children may be exposed to chronic low levels of PAHs in these microenvironments. We have developed and evaluated sampling and analysis methods to measure the levels of several PAHs in soil, air, dust, food, and surface wipe samples. These methods have been used and refined in several pilot studies conducted at children's homes and day care centers. We recently used these methods in the Children's Total Exposure to Persistent Pesticides and Other Persistent Organic Pollutants (CTEPP) study. The CTEPP study measured the aggregate exposures of about 260 preschool children to over 50 persistent organic pollutants, including 9 PAHs, in their everyday environments. We will discuss the sampling and analysis methods used for measuring PAHs in the multimedia samples and the published results from our pilot studies. In addition from the CTEPP study, we will report the preliminary results for the levels of PAHs measured in environmental media collected at the homes and day care centers of 130 North Carolina preschool children.
This work has been funded wholly or in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under Cooperative Agreement CR822073 and contract No. 68-D-99-011 to Battelle. It has been subjected to Agency review and approved for publication.