Chapter 26
Conducting Risk Assessments for Preschoolers' Dietary Exposure to Pesticides 1
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Downloaded by UNIV OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST on June 2, 2018 | https://pubs.acs.org Publication Date: December 31, 1991 | doi: 10.1021/bk-1991-0446.ch026
Robin M. Whyatt and William J. Nicholson 1
Natural Resources Defense Council, 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011 Department of Community Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, One Gustave L. Levy Place, Box 1057, New York, NY 10029-6574
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Children generally receive greater dietary exposure in milligrams per kilogram of body weight (mg/kg bw) to pesticides than adults, due to higher food intake rates. For certain carcinogenic pesticides, this disproportionately greater childhood exposure is likely to have a significant impact on the magnitude of the lifetime cancer risk incurred, due to the long future life during which cancers initiated in childhood can develop. EPA does not explicitly consider the time-dependence of cancer risk in conducting carcinogen risk assessments. A time-dependent multistage model appears to be an appropriate model for estimating lifetime cancer risk resulting from preschooler exposure to pesticides. Analysis indicates that risks estimated using a time-dependent model will be increased by a factor of approximately three over risks estimated using the traditional EPA methodology. Young children generally receive greater exposure (in mg/kg bw) than adults to pesticide residues in food due to higher caloric requirements and food intake rates (7). For example, children ages 1-5 ingest approximately six times more fruit, five times as much milk, three and a half times as many grain products and approximately twice as much meat and vegetables per body weight as adult women ages 22-30 (2). EPA analysis indicates that estimated pesticide exposures will be "invariably highest in the infant and child subgroups" (5). For example, EPA estimated in 1989 that the average U.S. daily dietary exposure in mg/kg bw of infants
