EPA Research Partner Support Story: Chemical exposures via seafood consumption

Partner: National Tribal Toxics Council, National Tribal Science Council, Tribal Pesticide Program Council  
Challenge: Understanding chemical exposures to Tribes and subsistence populations via seafood consumption
Resource: Conduct a systematic review on subsistence aquatic biota consumption in collaboration with Tribal partners
Project Period: 2019 – Present

Fishing and seafood consumption play an important role in the health, culture, and way of life for many subsistence populations. Subsistence fishing populations include Tribes, fishers, and other populations who obtain most of their nutritional and caloric energy needs from consuming waterborne species (aquatic biota) such as fish and/or shellfish. Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), EPA conducts chemical risk evaluations to determine whether a chemical substance presents an unreasonable risk to health or the environment. The 2016 Lautenberg Act amends TSCA and helps EPA further ensure the safety of chemicals while explicitly considering “potentially exposed susceptible subpopulations.” Tribes have advocated to have subsistence exposure included in EPA risk assessments and have raised concerns that historically during TSCA reviews, EPA has missed important data on subsistence fish consumption that may have important implications for human health and the environment.

“Historically we had as much fish as we needed to eat. Now our consumption is suppressed. We would eat more if we had more.” – Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe Vice Chairman Russell N. Hepfer

Given the opportunity to address this gap, in 2019 EPA ORD and the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) partnered with the National Tribal Toxics Council, the National Tribal Science Council and the Tribal Pesticide Program Council to conduct a systematic literature review of fish, seafood and other waterborne species. A systematic literature review examines available evidence using explicit and reproducible methods to systematically search, critically appraise, and synthesize information on a specific issue using strategies that reduce biases. EPA ORD researchers, OCSPP staff and Tribal partners, in collaboration with EPA Region 10, formed a workgroup to determine an appropriate systematic review approach. EPA provided training on systematic review processes and tools to help identify relevant references and organize them to facilitate the review of literature. This empowered tribal workgroup members to significantly contribute to the systematic review from the gathering of data to completing the full-text reference screenings.

An upcoming EPA report with results and collected data from this project will inform public health assessments and evaluations such as TSCA chemical evaluations or other human health risk assessments that include estimating exposures to environmental contaminants via consumption of fish or shellfish throughout the U.S.