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Community Level Stressors and Their Impacts on Food Contamination
Citation:
Melnyk, L., Z. Al-Hamdani, K. Thomas, AND J. MacDonald Gibson. Community Level Stressors and Their Impacts on Food Contamination. 2016 ISES Annual Meeting, Utrecht, NETHERLANDS, October 09 - 13, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of the research is to understand a community’s food resources, utilization of those resources, and how the built and natural environment impact access to resources and potential chemical exposures.
Description:
Research is needed to understand a community’s food resources, utilization of those resources, and how the built and natural environment impact access to resources and potential chemical exposures. This research will identify stressors, relationships between those stressors, and explore potential interactions between food resources and chemical and non-chemical stressors. By evaluating various chemical and non-chemical stressors, an understanding of a community’s food resources and utilization with potential exposures can be obtained. With this understanding about the community’s potential dietary exposures and contributing factors, it will be possible to evaluate ways to mitigate and alleviate issues that could impact public health. The objectives of this research are 1) to obtain information on a community’s environmental exposures (chemical and non-chemical stressors) from various available databases and data and 2) to evaluate impacts on dietary exposure which may lead to adverse public health outcomes. This research will enhance public tools, in particular, the Community-Focused Exposure and Risk Screening Tool (CFERST), which can be utilized by community leaders in decision making by bridging all pertinent information to inform policy. Community level health analyses can support protective actions, be used by communities to identify and prioritize their risks based on scientific data and ensure that resources are directed where they will provide the greatest benefit. To capture the dynamics of the effects of chemical and non-chemical stressors on a community diet, a cumulative exposure model approach was developed. Geospatial Information System (GIS) mapping of the Durham County, North Carolina was used to visually describe the area. Data from the US Census Bureau, Dun & Bradstreet, CDC’s NHANES, local food residue measurements, EPA’s EnviroAtlas, and EPA’s EJScreen provided the input for the analyses. Correlations between the various inputs were calculated using Analytica. It was determined that location of industry, poverty level, stream contamination, and food residues were the most impactful to dietary exposure potentials.
