Abstract
Water ingestion and inhalation rate is an essential factor for determining the daily dose of environmental pollutants and establishing health criteria or environmental quality standards. In Japan, an daily water ingestion rate of 2 L/day and inhalation rate of 15 m3/day is commonly used to estimate the daily dose of pollutants through water ingestion and air inhalation. However, the scientific basis and representativeness of these values for Japanese has not been fully discussed. In this article, existing and most current scientific knowledge of human water ingestion and inhalation rate are introduced and discussed to better understand the current default values for Japanese in health risk assessment.
