Environmental Health Criteria 214

HUMAN EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT
increase ventilation can adversely affect the neighbouring community.
In many societies, commercial and residential use of property are
integrated. Family operated business along congested streets means
that contaminants generated in outdoors, indoors and workplaces are
intermingled. Even where commercial and residential property are
distinct, chemical and biological contaminants can lead to non-worker
exposures.
Information on human exposures has a well-recognized role as a
corollary to epidemiology. But it is more than this, because
understanding human exposures to environmental contaminants is
fundamental to public policy. The adequacy of environmental mitigation
strategies is predicated on improving or safeguarding human and
ecological health. The public mandate for and acceptance of controls
on emissions is first based on sensory awareness of pollution.
Irritated airways, foul-smelling exhaust, obscuring plumes, oil slicks
on water, dirty and foul-tasting water, and medical waste and debris
on beaches are readily interpreted as transgressions against us and
threaten commonly shared natural resources. As we enter the
twenty-first century, we recognize that we, humans have had profound
but often subtle impacts on the chemistry of the biosphere and
lithosphere. Metals, organic compounds, particulate matter, and
photochemically produced gases are widely dispersed, recognizing no
geographic or political boundaries. Global markets, urbanization, and
increased mobility have environmental contamination as a consequence.
Assessing the quantities and distribution of potentially harmful
contaminant exposures to human populations is a critical component of
risk management. As long as disease prevention and health promotion
are the principal tenets of public health, then assessing the levels
of contaminant exposures in environmental and biological samples will
be necessary.
This book presents the methodologies for surveying exposures,
analysing data and integrating findings with the ongoing national and
global debate defining natural limits to human behaviour. It serves
the cross-disciplinary needs of environmental managers, risk assessors
and epidemiologists to learn something about the design, conduct,
interpretation and value of human exposure studies of multimedia
environmental contaminants. For investigators considering exposure
studies, this book guides them to contemporary information on
measurement of analysis methods and strategies.
In Chapter 1 of the document the basic terms and concepts used in
exposure assessment are defined. Similar understanding of terms used
commonly among health assessors working in the different fields of
air, water, soil and food sciences is a critical starting point in
defining the emerging specialist area of exposure assessment.
Application of exposure research and routine assessments to the
information needs of risk managers, policy-makers and epidemiologists
is established in Chapter 2. Discussion of these information needs is
developed in Chapter 3, which presents the objectives for various
study designs.
Chapter 4 covers basic statistical concepts used in exposure
assessment. The intent is to inform the reader of how statistical
analysis is vital to all components of an exposure assessment. By
examples and references the reader is directed to more substantial
texts on study design, data analysis, modelling and quality control.
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