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RISK COMMUNICATION TOOLS FOR FISH CONSUMPTION ADVISORIES
Citation:
Petersen*, D. RISK COMMUNICATION TOOLS FOR FISH CONSUMPTION ADVISORIES. Presented at EPA Sediments forum, Alexandria, VA, 5/30-6/1/2001.
Description:
In EPA's Mercury Report to Congress an important finding ws that certain populations of subsistence fishermen are at high risk for methyl mercury toxicity because of their high consumption of contaminated fish. Often health risks of Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxicants (PBT) such as methyl mercury, PCBs or Dioxins are underestimated becauuse of their amplificiation in the food chain resulting in toxicity even though ambient levels of these PBT are within acceptable limits. Two concerns have developed from this situation, 1) most of the affected groups have not been identified, and 2) means of communicating the possible risk to the affected groups do not readily exist. Efforts are underway through the use of historical records and GIS to identify regions where lakes and rivers may be heaviily contaminated with mercury and where significant fish consumption occurs. The objective of this work is to increasingly define regions and specific lakes and rivers within states that have high levels of consumption of native fish, and where high mercury or other PBT concentrations in water can occur. A second part of this effort would include additional compilation of mercury or other PBT concentrations from wate bodies and fish that inhabit these lakes and rivers from historical data, or from data that has been recently collected. A third phase of this effort will be to further identify populations of subsistence fishermen or other high-risk groups who consume large quantities of fish from these waters. The final phase will be enhancement of the user-friendly risk communication tool (the Fish Quality Index), which is a color-coded pictogram for various fish species. This should transcend language and literacy boundaries and should inform fishermen of the relative health risks according to the species of fish that they regularly consume. A pilot of the fish quality index has been developed for several new England States. We are also working on a Great Lakes Pilot, which will include most of EPA region 5 data. A working version will be available at the meeting. The demo will also include data from a superfund impacted river system.