Background Risks to Children of Lead Exposures Around the House. J. Beach and D. Dodge, ChemRisk Service, McLaren/Hart, Inc., 11320 Harbor Bay Parkway, Suite 100, Alameda, CA 94502; S. Pauwels and J. Samuelian, Stroudwater Crossing, 1685 Congress Street, Portland, ME 04012; T. Long, 35900 Landerbrook Drive, Suite 100, Cleveland, OH 44124; and P. J. Sheehan, ChemRisk Service, McLaren/Hart, Inc., 11320 Harbor Bay Parkway, Suite 100, Alameda, CA 94502
There have been a large number of studies conducted over the past decade describing lead concentrations in soil, house dust, indoor and ambient air, drinking water and common foods. These data sets provide a basis for an updated analysis of the "background" exposures and associated risks to children posed by lead in their homes and diet. To evaluate background risks, we first developed concentration distributions for lead in uncontaminated soils, house dust, indoor and ambient air, and drinking water representative of California cities. In addition, we developed lead concentration distributions for common foods consumed by children. Next, we gathered the distributions of data for child soil, dust and food ingestion rates and inhalation rates. Based on these distributions of exposure parameters, we calculated a distribution of blood lead doses for children in California exposed to lead from "uncontaminated" sources. The dose calculations were performed using the California Lead-Spread Model and Monte Carlo techniques. The analysis indicated that background lead exposures for children range over an order of magnitude. The results suggest that current default parameters may underestimate background exposures to lead and that indoor dust is an important contributor to lead exposure.
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