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A meta-analysis of children's object-to-mouth frequency data for estimating non-dietary ingestion exposure

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology volume 20, pages 536–545 (2010)Cite this article

Abstract

To improve estimates of non-dietary ingestion in probabilistic exposure modeling, a meta-analysis of children's object-to-mouth frequency was conducted using data from seven available studies representing 438 participants and ∼1500 h of behavior observation. The analysis represents the first comprehensive effort to fit object-to-mouth frequency variability and uncertainty distributions by indoor/outdoor location and by age groups recommended by the US Environmental Protection Agency for assessing childhood exposures. Weibull distributions best fit the observed data from studies with no statistical differences, and are presented by study, age group, and location. As age increases, both indoor and outdoor object-to-mouth frequencies decrease. Object-to-mouth frequency is significantly greater indoors (2–32 contacts/h) than outdoors (average 1–9 contacts/h). This paper compares results to a similar hand-to-mouth frequency meta-analysis. Children who tend to mouth hands indoors also tend to mouth hands outdoors; children who tend to mouth objects indoors tend to mouth objects outdoors. However, children who tend to mouth objects do not necessarily have a tendency to mouth hands. Unlike for hand-to-mouth frequency, a statistical difference was found among the various studies for object-to-mouth frequency. This could be due to different definitions for object mouthing across the studies considered. The analysis highlights the need for additional object-to-mouth data (indoors and especially outdoors) for various age groups using standardized collection and analysis.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to gratefully acknowledge the following individuals for providing assistance on this paper: James Leckie of Stanford University; Celestine Kiss of the Consumer Product Safety Commission; and Paul Lioy of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. USEPA ORD NERL, North Carolina, USA

    Jianping Xue, Valerie Zartarian & Nicolle Tulve

  2. USEPA Headquarters, Washington, DC, USA

    Jacqueline Moya

  3. Department of Physiological Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA

    Natalie Freeman

  4. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering School of Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Willa Auyeung

  5. University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

    Paloma Beamer

Authors
  1. Jianping Xue
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  2. Valerie Zartarian
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  3. Nicolle Tulve
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  4. Jacqueline Moya
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  5. Natalie Freeman
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  6. Willa Auyeung
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  7. Paloma Beamer
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Correspondence to Jianping Xue.

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The United States Environmental Protection Agency through its office of research and development funded and managed the research described here. It has been subjected to Agency's administrative review and approved for publication.

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Xue, J., Zartarian, V., Tulve, N. et al. A meta-analysis of children's object-to-mouth frequency data for estimating non-dietary ingestion exposure. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 20, 536–545 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/jes.2009.42

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/jes.2009.42

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