Patterns of fish and whale consumption in relation to methylmercury in hair among residents of Western Canadian Arctic communities
BACKGROUND: Methylmercury contamination of the environment represents a substantial environmental health concern. Human exposure to methylmercury occurs primarily through consumption of fish and marine mammals. Heavily exposed subgroups include sport or subsistence fishers residing in Arctic communi...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:7339417 2023-05-15T13:08:01+02:00 Patterns of fish and whale consumption in relation to methylmercury in hair among residents of Western Canadian Arctic communities Walker, Emily V. Yuan, Yan Girgis, Safwat Goodman, Karen J. 2020-07-06 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7339417/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32631282 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09133-2 en eng BioMed Central http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7339417/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32631282 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09133-2 © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. CC0 PDM CC-BY BMC Public Health Research Article Text 2020 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09133-2 2020-07-12T00:40:32Z BACKGROUND: Methylmercury contamination of the environment represents a substantial environmental health concern. Human exposure to methylmercury occurs primarily through consumption of fish and marine mammals. Heavily exposed subgroups include sport or subsistence fishers residing in Arctic communities. We aimed to estimate the association of fish/whale consumption patterns of Canadian Arctic subsistence fishers with the internal dose of methylmercury as measured in hair. METHODS: This research was conducted within ongoing community projects led by the CANHelp Working Group in Aklavik and Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories and Old Crow, Yukon. We interviewed each participant using a fish-focused food-frequency questionnaire during September–November 2016 and collected hair samples concurrently. Methylmercury was measured in the full-length of each hair sample using gas chromatography inductively-coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. Multivariable linear regression estimated beta-coefficients and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the effect of fish/whale consumption on hair-methylmercury concentrations. RESULTS: Among 101 participants who provided hair samples and diet data, the mean number of fish/whale species eaten was 3.5 (SD:1.9). The mean hair-methylmercury concentration was 0.60 μg/g (SD:0.47). Fish/whale consumption was positively associated with hair-methylmercury concentration, after adjusting for sex, hair length and use of permanent hair treatments. Hair-methylmercury concentrations among participants who consumed the most fish/whale in each season ranged from 0.30–0.50 μg/g higher than those who consumed < 1 meal/week. CONCLUSIONS: In this population of Canadian Arctic subsistence fishers, hair-methylmercury concentration increased with fish/whale consumption, but the maximum concentrations were below Health Canada’s 6.0 μg/g threshold for safe exposure. Text Aklavik Arctic Fort McPherson Northwest Territories Old Crow Yukon PubMed Central (PMC) Aklavik ENVELOPE(-135.011,-135.011,68.219,68.219) Arctic Fort McPherson ENVELOPE(-134.826,-134.826,67.433,67.433) Northwest Territories Yukon BMC Public Health 20 1 |
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Research Article Walker, Emily V. Yuan, Yan Girgis, Safwat Goodman, Karen J. Patterns of fish and whale consumption in relation to methylmercury in hair among residents of Western Canadian Arctic communities |
topic_facet |
Research Article |
description |
BACKGROUND: Methylmercury contamination of the environment represents a substantial environmental health concern. Human exposure to methylmercury occurs primarily through consumption of fish and marine mammals. Heavily exposed subgroups include sport or subsistence fishers residing in Arctic communities. We aimed to estimate the association of fish/whale consumption patterns of Canadian Arctic subsistence fishers with the internal dose of methylmercury as measured in hair. METHODS: This research was conducted within ongoing community projects led by the CANHelp Working Group in Aklavik and Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories and Old Crow, Yukon. We interviewed each participant using a fish-focused food-frequency questionnaire during September–November 2016 and collected hair samples concurrently. Methylmercury was measured in the full-length of each hair sample using gas chromatography inductively-coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. Multivariable linear regression estimated beta-coefficients and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the effect of fish/whale consumption on hair-methylmercury concentrations. RESULTS: Among 101 participants who provided hair samples and diet data, the mean number of fish/whale species eaten was 3.5 (SD:1.9). The mean hair-methylmercury concentration was 0.60 μg/g (SD:0.47). Fish/whale consumption was positively associated with hair-methylmercury concentration, after adjusting for sex, hair length and use of permanent hair treatments. Hair-methylmercury concentrations among participants who consumed the most fish/whale in each season ranged from 0.30–0.50 μg/g higher than those who consumed < 1 meal/week. CONCLUSIONS: In this population of Canadian Arctic subsistence fishers, hair-methylmercury concentration increased with fish/whale consumption, but the maximum concentrations were below Health Canada’s 6.0 μg/g threshold for safe exposure. |
format |
Text |
author |
Walker, Emily V. Yuan, Yan Girgis, Safwat Goodman, Karen J. |
author_facet |
Walker, Emily V. Yuan, Yan Girgis, Safwat Goodman, Karen J. |
author_sort |
Walker, Emily V. |
title |
Patterns of fish and whale consumption in relation to methylmercury in hair among residents of Western Canadian Arctic communities |
title_short |
Patterns of fish and whale consumption in relation to methylmercury in hair among residents of Western Canadian Arctic communities |
title_full |
Patterns of fish and whale consumption in relation to methylmercury in hair among residents of Western Canadian Arctic communities |
title_fullStr |
Patterns of fish and whale consumption in relation to methylmercury in hair among residents of Western Canadian Arctic communities |
title_full_unstemmed |
Patterns of fish and whale consumption in relation to methylmercury in hair among residents of Western Canadian Arctic communities |
title_sort |
patterns of fish and whale consumption in relation to methylmercury in hair among residents of western canadian arctic communities |
publisher |
BioMed Central |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7339417/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32631282 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09133-2 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-135.011,-135.011,68.219,68.219) ENVELOPE(-134.826,-134.826,67.433,67.433) |
geographic |
Aklavik Arctic Fort McPherson Northwest Territories Yukon |
geographic_facet |
Aklavik Arctic Fort McPherson Northwest Territories Yukon |
genre |
Aklavik Arctic Fort McPherson Northwest Territories Old Crow Yukon |
genre_facet |
Aklavik Arctic Fort McPherson Northwest Territories Old Crow Yukon |
op_source |
BMC Public Health |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7339417/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32631282 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09133-2 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC0 PDM CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09133-2 |
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BMC Public Health |
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20 |
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1 |
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