Average Daily Dose equation

The general population can be exposed to chemical substances in indoor as well as in outdoor (ambient) air via inhalation of vapors, aerosols, and dusts in the air. The term inhalation exposure is defined as the concentration of a substance in inhaled air at the boundary of the body, and is expressed as an average concentration per unit time (e.g., mg/m per day). In order to estimate a daily dose of a substance from the exposure concentration of the substance in the air, the inhalation rate is used. According to US-EPA (1997), the average daily dose (ADD) can be estimated from the exposure concentration by using the following equation ... 

In the Monte Carlo approach, there are no inherent limitations on the complexity of the exposure equation, the number of component variables, the probability distributions for the variable components, or the number of iterations. This freedom from limitations is especially useful in simulating the distributions of a lifetime average daily dose (LADD) for the different exposure scenarios considered herein. As its name suggests, a LADD is the average over all of the days in an individual s lifetime of the dose of a chemical (e.g. atrazine, simazine, or both) received by that individual in those days as a result of his or her exposure from one or more exposure pathways (e.g. water, diet and herbicide handling). Because the exposure equation can explicitly consider each day individually, the values of the equation s variable components can vary from day to day and have different distributions for different ages. The length of an individual s lifetime can also vary from individual to individual. 

The oral reference dose (Oral RfD) is an estimate of the daily exposure of a person to a contaminant that is likely to be without appreciable risk of a deleterious non-carcinogenic effect during a lifetime (USEPA http //www.epa.gov/iris/). Oral RfD values for POP concentrations in seafood types are presented in Table 16.5, together with the daily intake of POPs from seafood consumed in Singapore. Daily intakes of POPs from seafood are below the oral RfD. The cancer benchmark concentration (Dougherty et al., 2000) represents the exposure concentration at which a lifetime cancer risk equates to one excess cancer death in one million persons. This level is defined as the public health protective concentration in the Congressional House Report to the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 in the USA. Cancer benchmark concentrations were exceeded for DDTs, heptachlor, and PCBs (See Table 16.5). The cancer hazard ratio is the ratio of the MDI for a specific contaminant relative to the cancer benchmark concentration. The cancer hazard ratio represents the extent to which average daily exposure exceeds the benchmark concentration. The cancer hazard ratio of seafood consumption... 

Once there is a measure of the concentration of the pesticide in the exposure medium (air, water, food, etc.) in contact with the body or the actual concentration that comes into contact with the body, a daily dose metric can be calculated (e.g. maximum, average, geometric mean, etc.). This typically involves developing a mathematical equation that expresses dose as a function of pesticide concentration and other important parameters referred to as human exposure factors (USEPA, 1999a). In the context of this discussion, the term human exposure factor refers specifically to (a) human characteristics, such as body weight, surface area, life expectancy, inhalation rates for air and consumption rates for food, drinking water and soil (b) human behaviors, such as activity patterns, occupational and residential mobility and consumer product use, which are used by exposure assessors to calculate potential dose. 

Greenway et al. (11) reported that the half-life for E10-12 Ac outdoors for 131 days at an average daily temperature of 14.5 + 2.5 C for initial doses 1, 3, and 10 mg was 65.2 + 1.9 days. From Table I and Equation 5, one can calculate the half-lives at 14.5 C for other 12 carbon acetates. Thus, at 14.5 C, t values in days for the given compounds are Z7-12 Ac, 47.4 Z9-12 Ac, 61.1 12 Ac, 67.8. Considering the lack of precise temperatures outdoors and possible differences in air speed outdoors and indoors, these data are in satisfactory and perhaps somewhat fortuitous agreement with that of Greenway et al. (11). 

---