Body surface area in the French population: A proposed distribution for health risk assessments

Characterizing exposure in health risk assessments requires the use of human exposure variables. Use of French data improves the specificity of results found in the French population. Until now, although we have French data for body mass, space-time budgets, and food consumption, no data have been available for French body surface areas, although this information is useful for estimating dermal exposure [1]. Body surface areas are also useful in other contexts, including for adjustment of some types of cancer treatment. This paper proposes an estimation of the body surface of the French population, since no French study measures this variable directly. We selected a model for this estimation that uses population weights and heights, and then applied to it recent French data (the 2006 national health and nutrition survey and medical pediatric health certificates from 2009). The available data do not allow us to adjust for gender or age at every age. Accordingly, the results are presented by age groups to meet the needs of risk assessment. To facilitate the use of these data in a probabilistic approach, we propose adjustment of a probability distribution. The association between body surface area and mass was also characterized with the Spearman correlation coefficient.