Estimating Children’s Soil and Dust Ingestion Rates for Exposure Science Request for Applications (RFA) and Informational Webinar

Webinar
United States

Background Information:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as part of its Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, is asking the scientific community to propose transdisciplinary research to develop or apply innovative approaches and methods to improve the estimates, better characterize the variability, and reduce the uncertainty of soil and dust ingestion rates for children aged six months through six years.

Ingestion of soil and dust is a potential route of exposure for environmental chemicals. Young children may ingest significant quantities of soil and dust because they often play on the ground and put their hands and other objects that can have dust or soil on them into their mouths. Accurate and reliable data for distributional estimates of soil and dust ingestion for all lifestages are important for exposure assessment, dose model input, and risk assessment. These, in turn, support evidence-based decisions for the remediation of contaminated media and help reduce risk posed by pollutants in the environment. When scientifically verified and accurate data on ingestion rates of soil and dust for specific age groups are combined with other relevant individual, environmental, social and cultural data, more accurate exposure and dose estimates and risk assessments may be possible.

This RFA is supported by EPA’s Sustainable and Healthy Communities (SHC) national research program, which sponsors research that promotes healthy and resilient communities.

Applications should address the following Research Area:

Innovative approaches/methods to estimate children’s soil and dust ingestion rates: Develop or apply innovative methods to estimate soil and dust ingestion. These can include improving and enhancing existing ingestion rate methodologies or developing new methodologies, such as the non-targeted analysis approach. 

This RFA is supported by EPA’s Sustainable and Healthy Communities (SHC) national research program, which promotes and builds healthy and resilient communities.

The STAR Program’s goal is to stimulate and support scientific and engineering research that advances EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment. It is a competitive, peer-reviewed, extramural research program that provides access to the nation’s best scientists and engineers in academic and other nonprofit research institutions. STAR funds research on the environmental and public health effects of air quality, environmental changes, water quality and quantity, hazardous waste, toxic substances, and pesticides.

Apply today: Estimating Children’s Soil and Dust Ingestion Rates for Exposure Science 

Oil and Dust Informational Webinar Q&A's (PDF)(3 pp, 87 K, 7/14/2020)