STUDY DESIGN FOR A PILOT STUDY OF CHILDREN'S TOTAL EXPOSURE TO PERSISTENT PESTICIDES AND OTHER PERSISTENT ORGANIC PESTICIDES "CTEPP"

The Children's Total Exposure to Persistent Pesticides and Other Persistent Pollutant (CTEPP) study is one of the largest aggregate exposure studies of young children in the United States. The CTEPP study examines the exposures of about 260 preschool children and their primary adult caregivers to pollutants commonly found in their everyday environments. The major objectives of this three-year study were to quantify children's aggregate exposures, to apportion the exposure pathways, to identify the important exposure media, and to formulate the important hypotheses for future testing. Participants were recruited from randomly selected day care centers and homes in six North Carolina (NC) and six Ohio (OH) counties. Monitoring was performed over 48-hr periods at the children's homes and/or day care centers. Multimedia samples that were collected included duplicate diet, drinking water, indoor air, outdoor air, urine, floor dust, play area soil, transferable residues, and surface wipes (hand, food preparation, and hard floor). The samples were extracted and analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry for over 50 pollutants. Future work will include aggregate exposure assessments for the preschool children through environmental sampling, time?activity diaries, food diaries and questionnaires. In addition, 10% of the preschool children (n=26) were videotaped for about 2 hours at homes in OH to supplement the activity diaries and observations. All of the measurement data and associated information will be incorporated into the CTEPP database. This valuable...