title: Mouthing activity data for children aged 7 to 35 months in Taiwan.
abstract: Young children's mouthing activities thought to be among the most important exposure pathways. Unfortunately, mouthing activity studies have only been conducted in a few countries. In the current study, we used videotaping and computer-based translating method to obtain mouthing activity data for 66 children aged 7-35 months in Taiwan. The median indoor hand-to-mouth and object-to-mouth frequencies were 8.91 and 11.39 contacts/h, respectively. The median indoor hand-to-mouth and object-to-mouth hourly contact durations were 0.34 and 0.46 min/h, respectively. The indoor object-to-mouth activities were significantly and negatively correlated with age. Children aged 12 to <24 months in the current study had lower indoor hand-to-mouth and object-to-mouth frequencies than children of same age group in the United States. We also found that indoor mouthing duration with pacifier was significantly and negatively correlated with indoor mouthing duration with other non-dietary objects. The results of the current study indicate that the mouthing behaviors may be different between different countries or populations with different ethnic or lifestyle characteristics. We conclude that using hand-to-mouth frequency values from the current literature may not be most reliable for estimating non-dietary exposures of young children living in Taiwan or even in other similar Asian countries.
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Ming-Chien
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Tsou
authors.affiliation: National Exposure Research Laboratory, Office of Research and Development, US Environmental Protection Agency (E205-01), Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA.
authors.forename: Halûk
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Özkaynak
authors.affiliation: Environmental Health Sciences, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA.
authors.forename: Paloma
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Beamer
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Winston
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Dang
authors.affiliation: Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Hsing-Cheng
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Hsi
authors.affiliation: 1] Department of Pediatrics, Taipei Mackay Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan [2] Mackay Junior College of Medicine, Nursing and Management, Taipei, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chuen-Bin
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Ling-Chu
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Chien
mesh_terms: D002652:Child Behavior; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004781:Environmental Exposure / Q000032:analysis* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005106:Exploratory Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior; D008297:Male; D009055:Mouth; D041361:Pacifiers / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010988:Play and Playthings; D013391:Sucking Behavior; D013624:Taiwan; D013997:Time Factors; D014743:Videotape Recording