On October 27, the EPA released the final report “Highlights of the Child-Specific Exposure Factors Handbook,” an accessible introduction to the Child-Specific Exposure Factors Handbook (CSEFH), which provides risk assessors a user-friendly reference guide to “behavioral and physiological characteristics needed to estimate childhood exposure to toxic contaminants and other environmental stressors”.
The Highlights Handbook presents background data and studies, explains the different lifestages of children, lists the fundamental principles of exposure assessment and cumulative exposure, and provides references for all these components.
These tools are becoming increasingly handy to planners and evaluators of environmental effects as they are taking on the role of health risk assessors. In the actual CSEFH, there are specific chapters that are most likely pertinent to planners. These would the chapters devoted to non-dietary exposures:
- CSEFH Chapter 1 Introduction (294 KB)
- CSEFH Chapter 2 Variability and Uncertainty (119 KB)
- CSEFH Chapter 3 Water Ingestion (570 KB)
- CSEFH Chapter 4 Non-Dietary Ingestion Factors (466 KB)
- CSEFH Chapter 5 Ingestion of Soil and Dust (1 MB)
- CSEFH Chapter 6 Inhalation Rates (784 KB)
- CSEFH Chapter 7 Dermal Exposure Factors (632 KB)
- CSEFH Chapter 16 Activity Factors (2 MB)
- CSEFH Glossary (100 KB)
Here is an example of some of the data available:
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