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Article: An assessment of the cord blood:maternal blood methylmercury ratio: implications for risk assessment.(Research)
- Article from:
- Environmental Health Perspectives
- Article date:
- September 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In the current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reference dose (RfD) for methytmercury, the one-compartment pharmacokinetic model is used to convert fetal cord blood mercury (Hg) concentration to a maternal intake dose. This requires a ratio relating cord blood Hg concentration to maternal blood Hg concentration. No formal analysis of either the central tendency or variability of this ratio has been done. This variability contributes to the overall variability in the dose estimate. A ratio of 1.0 is implicitly used in the model, but an uncertainty factor adjustment is applied to the central tendency estimate of dose to address variability in that estimate. Thus, ...