Especially when determining the exposure of a population rather than individuals, indirect methods can often make use of relevant statistics about the activities that can lead to an exposure. These statistics are called exposure factors. They are generally drawn from the scientific literature or governmental statistics. For example, they may report informations such as amount of different food eaten by specific populations, divided by location or age, breathing rates, time spent for different modes of commuting, showering or vacuuming, as well as information on types of residences. Such information can be combined with contaminant concentrations from ad-hoc studies or monitoring network to produce estimates of the exposure in the population of interest. These are especially useful in establishing protective standards.
Exposure factor values can be used to obtain a range of exposure estimates such as average, high-end and bounding estimates. For example, to calculate the lifetime average daily dose one would use the equation below:
All of the variables in the above equation, with the exception of contaminant concentration, are considered exposure factors. Each of the exposure factors involves humans, either in terms of their characteristics (e.g., body weight) or behaviors (e.g., amount of time spent in a specific location, which affects exposure duration). These characteristics and behaviors can carry a great deal of variability and uncertainty. In the case of lifetime average daily dose, variability pertains to the distribution and range of LADDs amongst individuals in the population. The uncertainty, on the other hand, refers to exposure analyst's lack of knowledge of the standard deviation, mean, and general shape when dealing with calculating LADD.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys Exposure Factors Handbook' provides solutions when confronting variability and reducing uncertainty. The general points are summarized below: