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How children spend their time: a sample survey for use in exposure and risk assessments
A Silvers1, B T Florence, D L Rourke
1University of Texas School of Public Health.
Insights
Children spend most time indoors, making home environments crucial for exposure and risk assessments. This study documented children's time-activity patterns to inform environmental health evaluations.
Area of Science:
- Environmental health
- Risk assessment
- Children's health
Background:
- Children's heightened sensitivity to environmental contaminants necessitates focused exposure and risk assessments.
- Accurate documentation of children's time-activity patterns is essential for calculating exposure levels and assessing risks.
Purpose of the Study:
- To document how, where, and when children aged 5-12 years spend their time.
- To gather data for environmental exposure and risk assessments specific to children.
Main Methods:
- A 1990-1991 survey of 1000 households across six states.
- Utilized a retrospective time diary method over 24-hour periods.
- Sampled behavior across weekdays, weekends, and all four seasons.
Main Results:
- Children aged 5-12 years spend the majority of their time indoors at home.
- Consistent patterns observed across varied geographic regions and seasons.
- Data aligns with previous research on children's activity patterns.
Conclusions:
- Indoor, onsite hazards should be a primary focus for children's environmental risk assessments.
- Understanding children's time-activity budgets is critical for public health evaluations.
- The study provides valuable data for refining exposure models in children.
Abstract:
Children are becoming an increasingly important focus for exposure and risk assessments because they are more sensitive than adults to environmental contaminants. A necessary step in measuring the extent of children's exposure and in calculating risk assessments is to document how and where children spend their time. This 1990-1991 survey of 1000 households was designed for this purpose, targeting children between 5 and 12 years of age, in six states in varied geographic regions. The behavior of children was sampled on both weekdays and weekends over all four seasons of the year using a retrospective time diary to allocate time to activities during the previous 24 h. Information was obtained on the kinds and locations of activities, the nature of the microenvironments of the locations, and the time spent in the different environments. Measures of variability in addition to mean hours per day are reported. Results of this study closely match those of earlier research on California children's activities done by the California Air Resources Board. One important finding of the survey was that 5- to 12-year-old children in all geographic regions spend most of their time indoors at home, indicating that risk assessments should focus on indoor, onsite hazards.