TPM-M. Assessing Risk from Environmental Toxins to Unique Populations: Global Changes and Local Impacts .
Organized by: Elizabeth Resek
Authors: Resek E, US Environmental Protection Agency; Kwiatkowski R, Health Canada; Sexsmith W, Carleton University; Foran J, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission; Chaisson A, The LifeLine Group resek.elizabeth@epa.gov
Abstract: The issues are global, the impacts are local.
Changing climate that diminishes expected food sources and introduces new species to whole regions of the planet, dump sites for toxic waste and long range transport of toxins are all global issues presenting challenges for health policy makers at the local, national and international levels. New, flexible, relevant and accurate risk assessment tools must be available for these decision-makers if they are to efficiently and effectively protect the local and global communities.
Relevant and accurate exposure/risk assessments begin with knowledge about how individuals in a community interact with their environment, including their dietary patterns with foods available to them. For the “general population”, the commercial modern society, an abundance of surveys and studies and media monitoring accrue to inform these assessments. Increasingly, new assessment tools—probabilistic software models—are used with these databases to display anticipated exposures/risks to different subgroups of the community under different circumstances and conditions. For indigenous communities, the toxic residues in water, soil, air and food have been measured in a growing abundance of studies, but few relevant, accurate risk assessments have been created which heartily inform the risk mitigation and health policy decision-making.
Missing in the equations has been the ability to inform the exposure/risk assessment models as to the dietary profiles and activity profiles for individuals in these indigenous communities. Now, traditional food, water and home materials can be considered in the same state-of-the-art exposure/risk assessment models used by assessors of the general population’s risks.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) and Health Canada have created this capability through cooperative projects that enhance the existing suite of LifeLineTM Exposure and Risk Assessment Software models to ensure that the unique diets and activities of indigenous populations living traditional lifestyles are accurately reflected when making decisions that affect the their health. These tools provide regulators with the ability to better characterize exposure and risk for focused populations, but also to build capacity within communities for informed decision-making about health and environmental concerns.
Broader use of these same tools is apparent, enabling assessors to consider any unique population such as those on special needs diets; those with unique cultural diets; populations with specific work activities, such as farm workers; and sensitive populations such as children; women of child-bearing age; and the elderly. They also will allow current diets ascribed to the general population to be updated as eating trends change—an anticipated reality of global climate changes.
Indigenous populations, including Native American, First Nations and Inuit communities have been the initial focus of North American international, collaborative projects. The traditional diets of these populations may hail from areas near formerly used defense sites or open dump sites, and are particularly vulnerable to climate changes and mining/drilling activities. High rates of cancer at specific sites, asthma and other health effects compel assessment of possible environmental influences. Assessments must reflect the unique lifestyles and diets of these people.
Multiple government agencies must address concerns about exposure to toxic chemicals on the plant materials being used for basket weaving and other arts. Whole families are exposed during the collection and preparation of the materials. In addition they are exposed to these same chemicals in their homes since many of the artisans work there. New exposure assessment methods were needed to address these potential risks. Fortunately, existing approaches and databases related to agricultural field workers’ exposure to pesticide were able to be modified and applied to represent exposure scenarios experienced by collectors of artisan materials. The exposure and risk approaches that were developed can now be applied to a wide range of workers including those in farming, ranching, forestry, museums and many other scenarios where part or all of the body surface is in contact with materials containing chemical residues.
At the 2005 ISEA Conference in Tucson, Arizona, the US EPA presented its initial experience with exposure and risk assessment methods for individuals living in tribal communities in the US. The presentation featured topics about changing diets due to climate change and seasonal influences on availability of different foods, activity patterns, and contamination pathways. Since then, assessments have been completed for tribal and indigenous communities around the Great Lakes, Alaska and in Northern Canada. The assessment tools are being introduced to those communities for their use.
The accomplishments experienced by Health Canada and the US EPA will be presented in showing real examples of community-specific exposure and risk assessments to real-world issues. Presentations will include case studies, new harmonized approaches for development of necessary data and assessment approaches, applications in tribal and indigenous populations. Successful community use requires modification of the software format to conform to the user-interface needs of the local health professional and community cultural perspectives. Training and technical support fashioned for the community level is significantly different from that needed for seasoned agency risk assessors. Introduction and use of these sophisticated tools at the local level has been further enhanced by the work of Mexican collaborators who developed Spanish teaching tools for the software. The utility of the risk assessment models to real-world issues of importance to tribal communities in North America and public health agencies serving those communities is now being studied as part of US and Canadian projects.
These tools are freely available to all interested parties.
The presentation at the Global Conference will convey four important elements of this work:
- new modeling concepts necessary for relevance, flexibility, application of atypical data bases and user interface efficiency
- dietary exposure and risk assessments accomplished with the new models using atypical data sources for community dietary patterns,
- social and community needs for software interface design, training, technical assistance and utility to public health needs
- importance and benefits of harmonization of approaches to exposure and risk assessment
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