Chapter 49 - Residential Exposure Assessment: An Overview

Abstract

This chapter provides an insight into residential environments exposed to pesticides and should be considered in very dynamic terms. Chemicals that are released into or otherwise enter the residential environment tend to partition into various compartments, either through direct dispersion in indoor air or through adsorption onto surfaces that serve as “sinks” from which material can subsequently be released into the air. Although inhalation exposure and indoor air quality have received the most attention to date, there are a number of non-inhalation exposure pathways that are likely to be of equal or greater importance for human residential exposures to pesticides and other chemicals. Given that the potential for postapplication exposures largely exists because of product use in and around the home, the need to develop and validate models for prediction of multipathway, multiroute exposures and absorbed dose is evident. Residential exposures to pesticides and other chemicals are estimated by means of either monitoring and/or predictive modeling but, unfortunately, little or no guidance is available for those attempting such estimates.