Identifying Childhood Age Groups for Exposure Assessments and Monitoring

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe a standard set of age groups for exposure assessors to consider when assessing childhood exposure and potential dose to environmental contaminants. In addition, this article presents examples to show how the age groups can be applied in children's exposure assessments. A consistent set of childhood age groups, supported by an underlying scientific rationale, will improve the accuracy and comparability of exposure and risk assessments for children. The effort was undertaken in part to aid the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in implementing such regulatory initiatives as the 1997 Presidential Executive Order 13,045, which required all federal agencies to ensure that their standards take into account special risks to children. The standard age groups include: birth to <1 month; 1 to <3 months; 3 to <6 months; 6 to <12 months; 1 to <2 years; 2 to <3 years; 3 to <6 years; 6 to <11 years; 11 to <16 years; and 16 to <21 years. These age groups reflect a consideration of developmental changes in various behavioral, anatomical, and physiological characteristics that impact exposure and potential dose. It is expected that the availability of a standard set of early-life age groups will inform future analyses of exposure factors data as well as guide new research and data collection efforts to fill knowledge gaps.

Quantified outdoor micro-activity data for children aged 7–12-years old

“…The Wilcoxon-rank sum test was applied to determine if there were significant differences between the age groupings at the first node of the tree and the Kruskal-Wallis test for comparison across the groups was applied to assess for significant differences by age over the whole tree. The Kruskal-Wallis test for comparison across the groups was also used to determine if there were significant differences among the US EPA age groups for the entire cohort aged 1-12-years old (US EPA, 2005;Firestone et al, 2007).…”

“…These exposure-prone behaviors may change as children age from infants to toddlers, to older children and ultimately to adults. To account for these differences, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) recommends that the following age groups be used when conducting exposure and risk assessments in children: from birth to o1 month, from 1 to o3 months, from 3 to o6 months, from 6 to o12 months, from 1 to o2 years, from 2 to o3 years, from 3 to o6 years, from 6 to o11 years, from 11 to o16 years and from 16 to o21 years (US EPA, 2005;Firestone et al, 2007).…”

“…Meta-analyses of the data collected from younger children have indicated that mouthing decreases with age and other studies have reported differences by age in the frequency, with which children contact different types of objects or fomites with their hands (Freeman et al, 2001;Auyeung et al, 2006;Beamer et al, 2008). There is a clear need to quantify the mouthing and dermal contact activity patterns for individuals older than 6 years of age for use in the exposure assessments, and to determine if these trends continue past early childhood (Firestone et al, 2007;Xue et al, 2007).…”

Eval-g-norbixin Synthesis: Application as a Pigment on Polymers

“…[5][6][7][8][9][10] Os metais pesados são potenciais riscos para a saúde humana se limites seguros de exposição ou absorção são excedidos. 11 A exposição a metais representa uma ameaça significativa para a saúde das crianças em seu desenvolvimento comportamental e intelectual. 12 …”

Prognosis of Abdominal Pain in Children in Primary Care--A Prospective Cohort Study

“…Age was categorized into groups: 4 to 5 years, 6 to 9 years and 10 to 17 years. 16 We categorized children on the basis of their symptoms at baseline as resembling the symptoms of functional dyspepsia, irritable bowel syndrome, or functional abdominal pain. Symptoms of these FGIDs were defi ned by the Rome III criteria irrespective of the duration of symptoms (Supplemental Appendix 1, available at http:// annfammed.org/content/11/3/238/suppl/DC1).…”