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BACKGROUND: The environment is suspected to play an important role in the development of childhood asthma. Cohort studies are a powerful observational design for studying exposure-response relationships, but their power [...]

BACKGROUND: New approaches to link health surveillance data with environmental and population exposure information are needed to examine the health benefits of risk management decisions. OBJECTIVE: We examined the feasibility [...]

ABSTRACT Population-based human exposure models predict the distribution of personal exposures to pollutants of outdoor origin using a variety of inputs, including air pollution concentrations; human activity patterns, such as [...]

ABSTRACT To examine factors influencing long-term ozone ([O.sub.3]) exposures by children living in urban communities, the authors analyzed longitudinal data on personal, indoor, and outdoor [O.sub.3] concentrations, as well as [...]

Examining the influence of environmental exposures on various health indices is a critical component of the planned National Children's Study (NCS). An ideal strategy for the exposure monitoring component of [...]

The science of exposure assessment is relatively new and evolving rapidly with the advancement of sophisticated methods for specific measurements at the picogram per gram level or lower in a [...]

The Children's Post-Pesticide Application Exposure Study (CPPAES) was conducted to look at the distribution of chlorpyrifos within a home environment for 2 weeks after a routine professional crack-and-crevice application and [...]

Nitrous acid (HONO) may be generated by heterogeneous reactions of nitrogen dioxide and direct emission from combustion sources. Interactions among nitrogen oxides and ozone are important for outdoor photochemical reactions. [...]

The Russian Federation has made an intensive effort to compile and use information on the environment and human health. In 1996-1997, we evaluated the information that was collected and analyzed [...]

To help address the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, a physically based probabilistic model has been developed to quantify and analyze dermal and nondietary ingestion exposure and dose to [...]

Studies personal exposure to indoor and outdoor concentrations of ozone in 200 elementary school children in two Southern California communities. Factors that could potentially impact personal exposures; Differences in personal exposure between the two communities; Knowledge of chronic effects due to ozone exposure.

Background: Asthma is a common complex disease responsible for considerable morbidity and mortality, particularly in urban minority populations. The Mechanistic Indicators of Childhood Asthma study was designed to pilot an integrative approach in children's health research. The study incorporates exposure metrics, internal dose measures, and clinical indicators to decipher the biological complexity inherent in diseases such as asthma and cardiovascular disease with etiology related to gene-environment interactions.Methods/design: 205 non-asthmatic and asthmatic children, (9-12 years of age) from Detroit, Michigan were recruited. The study includes environmental measures (indoor and outdoor air, vacuum dust), biomarkers of exposure (cotinine, metals, total and allergen specific Immunoglobulin E, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic carbon metabolites) and clinical indicators of health outcome (immunological, cardiovascular and respiratory). In addition, blood gene expression and candidate SNP analyses were conducted.Discussion: Based on an integrative design, the MICA study provides an opportunity to evaluate complex relationships between environmental factors, physiological biomarkers, genetic susceptibility and health outcomes. PROJECT APPROVAL: IRB Number 05-EPA-2637: The human subjects' research protocol was reviewed by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the University of North Carolina; the IRB of Westat, Inc., the IRB of the Henry Ford Health System; and EPA's Human Subjects' Research Review Official. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern epidemiological studies face opportunities and challenges posed by an ever-expanding capacity to measure a wide range of environmental exposures, along with sophisticated biomarkers of exposure and response at the individual level. The challenge of deciding what to measure is further complicated for longitudinal studies, where logistical and cost constraints preclude the collection of all possible measurements on all participants at every follow-up time. This is true for the National Children's Study (NCS), a large-scale longitudinal study that will enroll women both prior to conception and during pregnancy and collect information on their environment, their pregnancies, and their children's development through early adulthood-with a goal of assessing key exposure/outcome relationships among a cohort of approximately 100 000 children. The success of the NCS will significantly depend on the accurate, yet cost-effective, characterization of environmental exposures thought to be related to the health outcomes of interest. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of cost saving, yet valid and adequately powered statistical approaches for gathering exposure information within epidemiological cohort studies. The proposed approach involves the collection of detailed exposure assessment information on a specially selected subset of the study population, and collection of less-costly, and presumably less-detailed and less-burdensome, surrogate measures across the entire cohort. We show that large-scale efficiency in costs and burden may be achieved without making substantive sacrifices on the ability to draw reliable inferences concerning the relationship between exposure and health outcome. Several detailed scenarios are provided that document how the targeted sub-sampling design strategy can benefit large cohort studies like the NCS, as well as other more focused environmental epidemiologic studies., (Published in 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)