ABSTRACT
This chapter provides approaches for addressing the issues, thus making pharmacokinetic factors in early life amenable to being included in human health risk assessments. There are a number of behavioral, dietary, anatomical, and physiological factors that can cause children to be more highly exposed to environmental toxicants than adults. Among the factors are pharmacokinetic differences that can cause children, especially early in life, to have increased uptake and reduced clearance of chemicals. Some of the pharmacokinetic differences can be attributed to body size and composition while others are due to functional immaturity of critical clearance systems. Even for children of exactly the same age, pharmacokinetic functions can vary due to interindividual differences in the rate at which hepatic and renal systems mature. Chemical dosimetry will likely differ across children’s developmental stages and between children and adults. There are numerous differences in absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination, which could interplay to affect dosimetry in early life.
