PEHRU Public and Environmental Health Research Unit, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT, UK.
Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2010 Jun;83(5):471-81. doi: 10.1007/s00420-010-0519-1. Epub 2010 Apr 17.
Methods and results are presented for an arsenic exposure assessment integral to an epidemiological case-control study of arsenic and cancer-the European Commission funded ASHRAM (Arsenic Health Risk Assessment and Molecular Epidemiology) study carried out in some counties of Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.
The exposure history of each participant (N = 1,392) was constructed by taking into account how much water they consumed (as water, in drinks and in food), sources of drinking water in their various residences over their lifetime, and the concentrations of arsenic in their various water supplies measured by Hydride Generation-Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (HG-AAS). Concentrations of arsenic in previous water supplies were either derived from contemporary analyses of the same source, or from routine historical data from measurements performed by the authorities in each country. Using this approach, 80% of the recorded lifetime residential history was matched to an arsenic concentration. Seven indices of current, life time, and peak exposure were calculated.
The exposure indices were all log-normally distributed and the mean and median lifetime average concentrations were in Hungary 14.7 and 13.3 microg l(-1), Romania 3.8 and 0.7 microg l(-1) and in Slovakia 1.9 and 0.8 microg l(-1), respectively. Overall 25% of the population had average concentrations over 10 microg l(-1) and 8% with exposure over 50 microg l(-1).
Careful assessment of arsenic in drinking water supplies (both current and previous) enabled the majority of study participants' cumulative lifetime of potential exposure to arsenic in residential water to be characterised.
介绍一项砷暴露评估方法，该方法是一项砷与癌症的流行病学病例对照研究的一部分，由欧盟委员会资助的 ASHRAM（砷健康风险评估和分子流行病学）研究在匈牙利、罗马尼亚和斯洛伐克的一些县进行。
通过考虑参与者消耗的水量（如水、饮料和食物中的水）、一生中不同住所的饮用水来源以及通过氢化物发生-原子吸收光谱法（HG-AAS）测量的各种水源中的砷浓度，构建每个参与者（N=1392）的暴露史。以前供水源中的砷浓度要么来自于对同一来源的当代分析，要么来自于每个国家当局进行的例行历史数据。通过这种方法，80%的记录终身居住史与砷浓度相匹配。计算了当前、终生和峰值暴露的七个指数。
暴露指数均呈对数正态分布，匈牙利的终生平均浓度的平均值和中位数分别为 14.7 和 13.3 μg/L，罗马尼亚为 3.8 和 0.7 μg/L，斯洛伐克为 1.9 和 0.8 μg/L。总体而言，25%的人口平均浓度超过 10 μg/L，8%的人口暴露浓度超过 50 μg/L。
对饮用水供应（包括当前和以前的）进行仔细评估，使大多数研究参与者的住宅水中潜在砷暴露的累积终生得到了描述。
