Exposure Modeling Research Branch, US Environmental Protection Agency, National Exposure Research Laboratory, Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA.
J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol. 2011 Jan-Feb;21(1):92-105. doi: 10.1038/jes.2009.60. Epub 2009 Dec 30.
This paper describes an evaluation of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey (ATUS) for potential use in modeling human exposures to environmental pollutants. The ATUS is a large, on-going, cross-sectional survey of where Americans spend time and what activities they undertake in those locations. The data are reported as a series of sequential activities over a 24-h time period--a "diary day"--starting at 0400 hours. Between 12,000 and 13,000 surveys are obtained each year and the Bureau has plans to continue ATUS for the foreseeable future. The ATUS already has about 73,000 diary days of data, more than twice as many as that which currently exists in the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) "Consolidated Human Activity Database" (CHAD) that the Agency uses for exposure modeling purposes. There are limitations for using ATUS in modeling human exposures to environmental pollutants. The ATUS does not report the location for a number of activities regarded as "personal." For 2006, personal activities with missing location information totaled 572 min/day, on average, for survey participants: about 40% of their day. Another limitation is that ATUS does not distinguish between indoor and outdoor activities at home, two of the traditional locational demarcations used in human exposure modeling. This lack of information affects exposure estimates to both indoor and outdoor air pollutants and potentially affects non-dietary ingestion estimates for children, which can vary widely depending on whether or not a child is indoors. Finally, a detailed analysis of the work travel activity in a subsample from ATUS 2006 indicates that the coding scheme is not fully consistent with a CHAD-based exposure modeling approach. For ATUS respondents in this subsample who reported work as an activity, roughly 48% of their days were missing work travel at one or both ends of the work shift or reported within work-shift travel inconsistently. An extensive effort would be needed to recode work travel data from ATUS for EPA's exposure modeling purposes.
本文评估了美国劳工统计局（BLS）的美国时间使用调查（ATUS），以评估其在建模人类暴露于环境污染物方面的潜在用途。ATUS 是一项大型、持续的、横断面调查，用于了解美国人在何处花费时间以及在这些地点从事哪些活动。数据以 24 小时时间周期内的一系列连续活动形式报告——即“日记日”，从 0400 小时开始。每年大约有 12000 到 13000 份调查，BLS 计划在可预见的未来继续进行 ATUS。ATUS 已经有大约 73000 个日记日的数据，是美国环保署（EPA）“综合人类活动数据库”（CHAD）中用于暴露建模目的的数据的两倍多。在建模人类暴露于环境污染物方面，ATUS 存在一些局限性。ATUS 并未报告许多被视为“个人”的活动的位置。对于 2006 年，没有位置信息的个人活动平均每天为参与者总计 572 分钟，占他们一天的 40%左右。另一个限制因素是，ATUS 没有区分家庭中的室内和户外活动，这是人类暴露建模中使用的两个传统位置划分。这种信息的缺乏会影响到室内和室外空气污染物的暴露估计值，并且可能会影响到儿童的非饮食摄入估计值，这取决于儿童是否在室内。最后，对 ATUS 2006 年的一个子样本中的工作旅行活动进行的详细分析表明，编码方案与基于 CHAD 的暴露建模方法不完全一致。在这个子样本中，报告工作为活动的 ATUS 受访者中，约有 48%的日子在工作班次的一端或两端缺少工作旅行，或者在工作班次内的旅行报告不一致。为了满足 EPA 的暴露建模目的，需要付出大量努力才能重新编码 ATUS 的工作旅行数据。
