Outdoor, indoor, and personal exposure to VOCs in children.
We measured volatile organic compound (VOC) exposures in multiple locations for a diverse population of children who attended two inner-city schools in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Fifteen common VOCs were measured at four locations: outdoors (O), indoors at school (S), indoors at home (H), and in personal samples (P). Concentrations of most VOCs followed the general pattern O approximately equal to S < P less than or equal to H across the measured microenvironments. The S and O environments had the smallest and H the largest influence on personal exposure to most compounds. A time-weighted model of P exposure using all measured microenvironments and time-activity data provided little additional explanatory power beyond that provided by using the H measurement alone. Although H and P concentrations of most VOCs measured in this study were similar to or lower than levels measured in recent personal monitoring studies of adults and children in the United States, p-dichlorobenzene was the notable exception to this pattern, with upper-bound exposures more than 100 times greater than those found in other studies of children. Median and upper-bound H and P exposures were well above health benchmarks for several compounds, so outdoor measurements likely underestimate long-term health risks from children's exposure to these compounds.
Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, 520 Delaware Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. jadgate@umn.edu
John L
JL
Adgate
Timothy R
TR
Church
Andrew D
AD
Ryan
Gurumurthy
G
Ramachandran
Ann L
AL
Fredrickson
Thomas H
TH
Stock
Maria T
MT
Morandi
Ken
K
Sexton
D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D016902:Air Pollution, Indoor / Q000032:analysis*; D002648:Child; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D005006:Ethnicity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008910:Minnesota; D009930:Organic Chemicals / Q000032:analysis; D018570:Risk Assessment; D014505:Urban Population; D014835:Volatilization
D000393:Air Pollutants; D009930:Organic Chemicals