Measurement and modeling of exposure to selected air toxics for health effects studies and verification by biomarkers

Abstract

In the study presented in this report (HEI Research Report 143), Roy M. Harrison and colleagues investigated personal exposure to a broad range of air toxics, with the goal of developing detailed personal exposure models that would take various microenvironments into account. Repeated measurements of exposure to selected air toxics were made for each of 100 healthy nonsmoking adults who resided in urban, suburban, or rural areas of the United Kingdom, among which exposures to traffic were expected to differ; repeated urine samples were also collected for analysis. Harrison and colleagues developed models to predict personal exposure on the basis of microenvironmental concentrations and data from time–activity diaries; they then compared measured personal exposure with modeled estimates of exposure.