Methods to Assess Aggregated Exposure of Chemicals – a Focus on Children Exposure to Lead

Abstract

Methods to Assess Aggregated Exposure of Chemicals – a Focus on Children Exposure to LeadAbstract Number:2390 Sébastien DENYS*, Guillaume Perouel, Phlippe Glorennec, Jean-Luc Volatier, and Nawel Bemrah Sébastien DENYS* French National Agency for food, environment and occupational health and safety, France, E-mail Address: [email protected] Search for more papers by this author , Guillaume Perouel French National Agency for food, environment and occupational health and safety, France, E-mail Address: [email protected] Search for more papers by this author , Phlippe Glorennec Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Santé Publique, France, E-mail Address: [email protected] Search for more papers by this author , Jean-Luc Volatier French National Agency for food, environment and occupational health and safety, France, E-mail Address: [email protected] Search for more papers by this author , and Nawel Bemrah French National Agency for food, environment and occupational health and safety, France, E-mail Address: [email protected] Search for more papers by this author AbstractExternal exposure assessment to ubiquitous contaminants should take into account the contributions from the several potential sources of contamination such as diet and environmental compartments (water, dust, air,…). In this perspective, data originating from different databases have to be gathered to combine the available information regarding: i) the occurrence of the considered contaminant in the exposure sources and ii) the exposure factors that account for the behavior of the population. However, combining databases is not easy to achieve as data are often collected independently, according to specific design and for specific populations. These can lead to methodological issues that should be thoroughly addressed before conducting the assessment. Objective of this presentation is to illustrate these difficulties, focusing on possible methods to assess the aggregated exposure to lead for the French children population (3 to 6 years old). This assessment was conducted by combining two national databases: a dietary exposure database collected from the second French total diet survey and the ‘Plomb-Habitat’ environmental exposure database that aimed to characterize the children environmental exposure to lead. The combination of the two data sources was conducted according to three probabilistic methods that differed in the way to consider the potential correlations between the exposure sources and in the way to match the two databases. The results obtained according to these methods provided different results for the total exposure doses to lead and the major exposure routes that contributed to the aggregated exposure. Thereby, these differences permitted to illustrate the uncertainty levels linked to the method that is used to aggregate the exposure routes, this point being a key issue in the risk assessment process.