Department of Community, Environment & Policy, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS29JT, UK.
J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol. 2021 Feb;31(1):34-44. doi: 10.1038/s41370-020-0249-8. Epub 2020 Jul 15.
Hand-to-face contacts are important for estimating chemical and microbial exposures. Few studies describe children's hand-to-eye or -nose contacts or adults' hand-to-face contacts. The study objective was to characterize hand-to-head (mouth, eyes, nose, and other) contacts for children in a daycare and adults in multiple locations. Macro-activities and sequences of hand-to-face contacts were recorded for 263 people observed for 30 min each. Statistically significant differences between locations, males and females, adults and children, and during eating and non-eating macro-activities were evaluated. Discrete Markov chains were fit to observed contact sequences and compared among adults and children during eating and non-eating macro-activities. No significant differences in contact frequency were observed between males and females with the exception of hand-to-nose contacts. Children tended to touch the mouth, eyes, and nose more frequently than adults during non-eating macro-activities. Significant differences in contact frequency were observed between locations. Transitional probabilities indicated that children make repetitive mouth, eye, and nose contacts while adults frequently transition to contacts of the head other than the mouth, eyes, or nose. More data are needed to evaluate the effect of age on adults' contact frequencies and to confirm lack of statistically significant differences between adults and children during eating macro-activities.
手-脸接触对于估计化学和微生物暴露非常重要。很少有研究描述儿童的手-眼或手-鼻接触，也很少有研究描述成年人的手-脸接触。本研究的目的是描述日托所儿童和多个场所成年人的手-头（嘴、眼睛、鼻子和其他部位）接触。对 263 名观察对象进行了 30 分钟的观察，记录了他们的宏观活动和手-脸接触的顺序。评估了位置、性别、成年人和儿童以及进食和非进食宏观活动之间的差异。对观察到的接触序列进行了离散马尔可夫链拟合，并比较了进食和非进食宏观活动期间成年人和儿童之间的差异。除了手-鼻接触外，男性和女性之间的接触频率没有显著差异。在非进食宏观活动中，儿童比成年人更频繁地触摸嘴、眼睛和鼻子。不同位置之间的接触频率存在显著差异。转移概率表明，儿童在进行口、眼、鼻重复接触，而成年人则经常接触嘴、眼或鼻以外的头部其他部位。需要更多的数据来评估年龄对成年人接触频率的影响，并确认进食宏观活动期间成年人和儿童之间不存在统计学上的显著差异。
