Children’s Exposure to Metals from CCA-Treated Wood: Factors in Assessing Inadvertent Ingestion Exposures. Y. Lowney, J. Tsuji, D. Pyatt, L. Yost, and D. Paustenbach, Exponent
Various studies funded by government agencies, industries, and public interest groups have attempted to evaluate the potential exposures to arsenic and other metals from inadvertent ingestion of residues on the hands of children playing on structures constructed of CCA-treated wood. A comparison of exposure assessments conducted to date indicates that there is no standard method for assessing risk for this novel exposure scenario, and the different approaches that have been tried have produced widely diverse conclusions regarding the potential for exposure. The discrepancies among the assessments are not limited to differences in input values for the various exposure parameters, but also include the manner in which each exposure pathway should be assessed, and which parameters need to be defined within the exposure assessment. This paper will present the current state of knowledge regarding the transfer of metals from residues on wood surfaces to hands, and the different methods that have been employed to estimate the hand-to-mouth transfer of residues. We will explore the implications of using behavioral data (i.e., observations of mouthing frequency in children) versus empirical data (i.e., measurements of hand soil loading and soil ingestion rates) to estimate the amount of skin surface area mouthed and thereby the amount of arsenic residue ingested. Our results indicate that only a fraction of the metals present in residues on wood are transferred to the skin surface, and that use of behavioral data on hand-to-mouth behavior, which lack an empirical basis for amounts ingested, may result in significant overestimates of exposure.
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