A meta-analysis of children's object-to-mouth frequency data for estimating non-dietary ingestion exposure.

To improve estimates of non-dietary ingestion in probabilistic exposure modeling, a meta-analysis of children's object-to-mouth frequency was conducted using data from seven available studies representing 438 participants and approximately 1500 h of behavior observation. The analysis represents the first comprehensive effort to fit object-to-mouth frequency variability and uncertainty distributions by indoor/outdoor location and by age groups recommended by the US Environmental Protection Agency for assessing childhood exposures. Weibull distributions best fit the observed data from studies with no statistical differences, and are presented by study, age group, and location.

The fraction of total hand surface area involved in young children's outdoor hand-to-object contacts.

Information on the fraction of total hand surface area touching a contaminated object is necessary in accurately estimating contaminant (e.g., pesticides, pathogens) loadings onto the hands during hand-to-object contacts.

Quantified activity pattern data from 6 to 27-month-old farmworker children for use in exposure assessment.

This study was conducted to describe exposure prone behaviors of infants and toddlers in the farmworker community. Analysis of hand and mouth contact frequencies and durations aids understanding of how children interact with their environment and are exposed via contact with surfaces. All 23 participating children (8 female infants, 5 male infants, 5 female toddlers and 5 male toddlers) lived with at least one farmworker.

Young children's hand contact activities: an observational study via videotaping in primarily outdoor residential settings.

Microlevel activity time series (MLATS) data were gathered on hand contact activities of 38 children (1-6 years old) by videotaping in primarily outdoor residential environments. The videotape recordings were then translated into text files using a specialized software called VirtualTimingDevicetrade mark. Contact frequency (contacts/h), duration per contact (s/contact), and hourly contact duration (min/h) were summarized for outdoor hand contacts with 15 distinct object/surface categories ("Animal", "Body", "Clothes/Towels", "Fabric", "Floor", "Food", "Footwear", "Metal", "Non-dietary Water", "Paper/Wrapper", "Plastic", "Rock/Brick", "Toys", "Vegetation/Grass", and "Wood") and two aggregate object/surface categories ("Non-dietary objects/surfaces" and "Total objects/surfaces").

Video methods in the quantification of children's exposures.

In 1994, Stanford University's Exposure Research Group (ERG) conducted its first pilot study to collect micro-level activity time series (MLATS) data for young children. The pilot study involved videotaping four children of farm workers in the Salinas Valley of California and converting their videotaped activities to valuable text files of contact behavior using video-translation techniques. These MLATS are especially useful for describing intermittent dermal (i.