Quantified Activity Patterns for Young Children in Beach Environments Relevant for Exposure to Contaminants

Abstract

In a study to evaluate beach play activities, 120 children were videotaped to observe and quantify factors that could influence their exposure to contaminants in the beach environment. Children aged 1 to 6 years were followed by researchers with video cameras at beaches (two in Miami, Florida and two in Galveston, Texas) for approximately one hour each. Factors evaluated included time spent in various beach locations, various activities engaged in, and various surfaces contacted (including contacts by hand and mouth). Activities recorded in the videos were transcribed to text files to allow for quantitative analyses. Across all sexes, age groups, and beaches, Wading was the most common activity and Seawater was the most common location where children played. The left hand was found to not be in contact with objects most of the time, while the right hand, considered the most dominant hand in most cases, contacted Plastic-Toys the most. Although activity patterns collection through videotaping and videotranslation can be labor-intensive, once collected, they can be widely useful for estimates of exposures to all contaminants in the beach environment (e.g., microorganisms and chemicals) as well as UV exposure, with considerations for whether the contaminants are found in water, sand or both. These activity patterns were collected to potentially look at exposures following the Deepwater Horizon 2010 Spill.

Methodologies for the collection of parameters to estimate dust/soil ingestion for young children

“…The time activity diaries will come from information collected from this study and from other sources including American Time Use Survey (ATUS) and Consolidated Human Activity Database (CHAD) ( 84 , 85 ). The MLATS will come from multiple studies conducted by the study team ( 38 , 45 , 74 , 75 , 78 , 86 ). Most of these studies are primarily focused on children’ outdoors, hence the study team collected additional videography and MLATS for young children in the indoor environment.…”

“…These MLATS sequences will be used directly in the model for estimation of dust ingestion for these children. Frequency and duration of contact activities will be extracted and analyzed for differences by US EPA age groups, race, income, region and built environment using non-parametric methods ( 34 , 74 , 77 , 78 ). Likewise, dust loading, hand rinse data, and variables from the survey will be evaluated for associations with US EPA child age groups, race, income, regions, built environment, seasons, and soil characteristics (moisture, particle size distribution) via simple and multiple regression.…”

Integrating microbial source tracking with quantitative microbial risk assessment to evaluate site specific risk based thresholds at two South Florida beaches

“…Exposure parameters for both adults and children were retrieved from a study which pooled 12 prospective cohorts (approximately 68,685 participants) to examine exposure durations, frequency, and ingestion volumes when swimming and recreating in water ( DeFlorio-Barker et al, 2018 ). However, a future QMRA should evaluate how site-specific exposure behaviors, as documented in Ferguson et al (2021a) influence these human health risk estimates. Other exposure routes, including the incidental ingestion of water through wading, fishing, water skiing, and kayaking could also be of health concern ( Dorevitch, 2011 ).…”

“…The integrated QMRA-MST study described in this paper is part of a much larger BEACHES project, which aimed to collect activity patterns for children on the beach, quantify oil spill concentrations in the nearshore environment [as related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill ( Montas et al, 2020 ; Xia et al, 2020 , 2021 ; Montas et al, 2022a , b )], and estimate chemical and bacterial exposure and health risks for young children. The overall study design, analysis of child-beach interaction behavior, and the predicted chemical exposure risk assessments are reported elsewhere ( Altomare et al, 2021 ; Ferguson et al, 2021a ). We report here the environmental MST data and the microbial risk assessment component of this BEACHES project.…”

“…As part of the BEACHES project (Beach Exposure And Child Health Study) during the summer of 2018, children were observed and documented while at play on beaches in Miami, Florida. The BEACHES study documented for the first-time specific exposure factors for children engaged in beach play activities ( Ferguson et al, 2020 , 2021a , b ; Tomenchok et al, 2020 ) relative to beach characteristics. Water ingestion was identified as a possible exposure pathway following observations of children wading in seawater.…”