Methodology to Capture Children's Non-Dietary Ingestion Exposure Activities During Meal Events

During meal events, a child's food can be contaminated through contacts with objects and surfaces, and/or unwashed hands that have chemical residues, increasing ingestion exposure of contaminants for the child. This is not surprising, given that very young children eat more with the hands than adults, are active, and play with toys and objects while eating. In addition, children's unwashed hands and toys are commonly inserted into their mouths during meal events, increasing exposure. By observing children during their meal events, information can be gathered on the frequency and duration of contacts between objects, foods, and hands, and the sequence of events before the hands, foods, or objects are inserted into the mouth. This article describes the process of refining a videotaping and video-translation methodology to capture micro-level activity time series (MLATS), in order to better quantify total exposure for young children as a result of their behavior during meal events and cross-contamination of foods and hands. These MLATS can be seen as detailed activity patterns that provide useful data, along with transfer coefficients and environmental concentration to estimate exposures.