Step 2.1 Estimating Exposure Doses

Example of an Ingestion Dose for Evaluating Cancer-Related Health Effects

The following example involves the calculation of an ingestion dose for evaluating cancer-related health effects.

To calculate the cancer exposure factor, multiply five days per week by twenty-six weeks per year by thirty-five years. The product is the numerator. To calculate the denominator, multiply 365 days by seventy years. Then divide the numerator by the denominator.

Note: assume the exposure occures over a lifetime of seventy years.

To calculate the site-specific dose, multiply eleven milligrams of chemical per kilogram of soil times 100 milligrams of soil per day times 0.000001 kilograms of soil per milligram of soil times 0.18. This product is then divided by seventy kilograms of body weight.

The site specific dose equals 0.000003 milligrams of chemical per kilogram of body weight per day.