Traditional Diet and Environmental Contaminants in Coastal Chukotka II: Legacy POPs

The article is the second in the series of four that present the results of a study on environmental contaminants in coastal Chukotka, conducted in the context of a multi-disciplinary investigation of indigenous foodways in the region. The article presents the results of the analysis of legacy Persi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Main Authors: Alexey A. Dudarev, Valery S. Chupakhin, Sergey V. Vlasov, Sveta Yamin-Pasternak
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2019
Subjects:
subsistence food
traditional diet
Indigenous people
environmental contaminants
PTS
POPs
DDT
PCB
food safety limits
coastal Chukotka
Russian Arctic
Medicine
R
Arctic
Bering Sea
Canada
bearded seal
Chukotka
Alaska
walrus*
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16050695
https://doaj.org/article/900d2f090e9846afafd00dbba3c0d4b1
Description
Summary:The article is the second in the series of four that present the results of a study on environmental contaminants in coastal Chukotka, conducted in the context of a multi-disciplinary investigation of indigenous foodways in the region. The article presents the results of the analysis of legacy Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) found in the samples of locally harvested food and indoor matters, collected in 2016 in coastal Chukotka. Temporal trends and circumpolar comparisons of POPs in food have been carried out. Estimated daily intakes (EDIs) of POPs by local food consumption were calculated based on the food intake frequencies (questionnaire data). Concentrations of the studied legacy POPs in marine mammal blubber were relatively high (up to 100⁻200 µg/kg ww) but not exceeding the allowable limits. Gray whale blubber and whale mantak were the most contaminated foods, followed by the ringed, spotted and bearded seal blubber, then by walrus blubber and fermented walrus (deboned walrus parts aged in subterranean pits, typically over a period of 6 months). At the backdrop of general decrease or invariability (compared to the previous coastal Chukotka study 15 years ago) of the majority of POPs, an increasing tendency of HCB, mainly in marine mammals, were noted. Legacy POPs in marine mammals sampled in Chukotka were generally much lower than in those sampled in Alaska and northern Canada. We suggest that the Alaska Coastal Current from the Bering Sea plays a major role in this phenomenon. Analyses of the additional sources of in-home food contamination (home-brewed alcohol, domestic insecticides) have revealed relatively high levels of HCHs, DDTs and PCBs, which still represent a share of dietary exposure of local people to POPs.

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