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      Implementation of human biomonitoring in the Dehcho region of the Northwest Territories, Canada (2016–2017)

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          Abstract

          Background

          Human biomonitoring represents an important tool for health risk assessment, supporting the characterization of contaminant exposure and nutrient status. In communities where country foods (locally harvested foods: land animals, fish, birds, plants) are integrated in the daily diet, as is the case in remote northern regions where food security is a challenge, such foods can potentially be a significant route of contaminant exposure. To assess this issue, a biomonitoring project was implemented among Dene/Métis communities of the Dehcho region of the Northwest Territories, Canada.

          Methods

          Participants completed dietary surveys (i.e., a food frequency questionnaire and 24-h recall) to estimate food consumption patterns as well as a Health Messages Survey to evaluate the awareness and perception of contaminants and consumption notices. Biological sampling of hair, urine and blood was conducted. Toxic metals (e.g., mercury, lead, cadmium), essential metals (e.g., copper, nickel, zinc), fatty acids, and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) were measured in samples.

          Results

          The levels of contaminants in blood, hair and urine for the majority of participants were below the available guidance values for mercury, cadmium, lead and uranium. However, from the 279 participants, approximately 2% were invited to provide follow up samples, mainly for elevated mercury level. Also, at the population level, blood lead (GM: 11 μg/L) and blood cadmium (GM: 0.53 μg/L) were slightly above the Canadian Health Measures Survey data. Therefore, although country foods occasionally contain elevated levels of particular contaminants, human exposures to these metals remained similar to those seen in the Canadian general population. In addition, dietary data showed the importance and diversity of country foods across participating communities, with the consumption of an average of 5.1% of total calories from wild-harvested country foods.

          Conclusion

          This project completed in the Mackenzie Valley of the Northwest Territories fills a data gap across other biomonitoring studies in Canada as it integrates community results, will support stakeholders in the development of public health strategies, and will inform environmental health issue prioritization.

          Electronic supplementary material

          The online version of this article (10.1186/s13690-018-0318-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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          Most cited references34

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          Update of the reference and HBM values derived by the German Human Biomonitoring Commission.

          In 2007, we reviewed the working principles and working procedures of the German Human Biomonitoring Commission together with the reference values and human biomonitoring (HBM) values derived up to that time. Since then, the Commission has decided to derive additionally HBM I values on the basis of tolerable daily intakes and has used and evaluated this new approach on the metabolites of (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) in urine. Furthermore, the Commission has derived a HBM I value for thallium in urine, has recinded the HBM values for lead in blood, and has updated the HBM values for cadmium in urine. Based on the representative data of the German Environmental Survey on Children from 2003 to 2006 (GerES IV), the Commission has updated the reference values for a large number of environmental pollutants in urine and blood of children in Germany. Since 2007, the Commission has derived new and updated reference values for PFOS and PFOA in human plasma, for thallium in urine, for aromatic amines in urine, for a comprehensive number of phthalate metabolites in urine, and for organochlorine pesticides in human breast milk. Furthermore, the Commission has evaluated background exposure levels for two naphthalene metabolites and acrylamide (using acrylamide-haemoglobin adduct) for the general population. This paper reports the new values, including those already published, in order to provide an updated overview. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
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            Local cultural animal food contributes high levels of nutrients for Arctic Canadian Indigenous adults and children.

            Food systems of Canadian Arctic Indigenous Peoples contain many species of traditional animal and plant food, but the extent of use today is limited because purchased food displaces much of the traditional species from the diet. Frequency and 24-h dietary interviews of Arctic adults and children were used to investigate these trends. The most frequently consumed Arctic foods were derived from animals and fish. In adults these foods contributed 6-40% of daily energy of adults. Children ate much less, 0.4-15% of energy, and >40% of their total energy was contributed by "sweet" and "fat" food sources. Nevertheless, for adults and children, even a single portion of local animal or fish food resulted in increased (P < 0.05) levels of energy, protein, vitamin D, vitamin E, riboflavin, vitamin B-6, iron, zinc, copper, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and potassium; although children had similar results for these nutrients, they did not reach significance for energy, vitamin D, or manganese. Because market foods are the major source of energy in the Arctic, traditional animal-source foods are extremely important to ensure high dietary quality of both adults and children.
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              Twenty years of the German Environmental Survey (GerES): human biomonitoring--temporal and spatial (West Germany/East Germany) differences in population exposure.

              The German Environmental Surveys (GerESs) are nationwide population studies, which have repeatedly been carried out in Germany since the mid-1980s. The subjects were representatively selected from the regional registration offices with regard to age, gender and community size. The first survey for adults (GerES I) was carried out in 1985/1986 (West Germany) followed by GerES IIa in 1990/1991 (West Germany) and GerES IIb in 1991/1992 (East Germany). In GerES II children were also included to some extent. In 1998, the third GerES for adults was conducted in both parts of Germany (GerES III). The current survey 2003/2006 (GerES IV) is focussing exclusively on children. A 1-year pilot study was conducted in 2001-2002 to collect information on parameters influencing the response rate and to test the suitability of the different instruments intended to be used for the main study. The main goal of the surveys is to analyse and document the extent, distribution and determinants of exposure to environmental pollutants of the German general population. Three main instruments of investigation were comprised in GerES: human biomonitoring (HBM), monitoring of the domestic environment, and collecting information on exposure pathways and living conditions via questionnaires. This paper is focussed on the general design of the GerESs, the trend over time and spatial differences (West Germany and East Germany) for HBM data on arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, pentachlorophenol (PCP), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). These substances have been determined in blood and/or morning urine of adults and children. All GerESs have been conducted in close connection with the National Health Interview and Examination Surveys performed by the Robert Koch-Institute, Berlin.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                1-519-888-4567 , mratelle@uwaterloo.ca
                kskinner@uwaterloo.ca
                matthew.laird@uwaterloo.ca
                smajowicz@uwaterloo.ca
                dbrandow@uwaterloo.ca
                srpackullmccormick@edu.uwaterloo.ca
                michele.bouchard@umontreal.ca
                denis.dieme@umontreal.ca
                kstartk@uwaterloo.ca
                juan.henao@uwaterloo.ca
                rhanning@uwaterloo.ca
                brian.laird@uwaterloo.ca
                Journal
                Arch Public Health
                Arch Public Health
                Archives of Public Health
                BioMed Central (London )
                0778-7367
                2049-3258
                3 December 2018
                3 December 2018
                2018
                : 76
                : 73
                Affiliations
                [1 ]ISNI 0000 0000 8644 1405, GRID grid.46078.3d, School of Public Health and Health Systems, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, , University of Waterloo, ; 200 University Ave W, Waterloo, ON Canada
                [2 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2292 3357, GRID grid.14848.31, Faculty of Medicine, , Université de Montréal, ; 2900 Edouard-Montpetit, Montreal, QC Canada
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5553-8612
                Article
                318
                10.1186/s13690-018-0318-9
                6276191
                30524727
                79a04794-a062-4623-b508-54c3d4ae42a6
                © The Author(s). 2018

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. 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.

                History
                : 5 September 2018
                : 24 October 2018
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100008632, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada;
                Categories
                Research
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2018

                Public health
                dene,first nations,biomonitoring,metals,traditional foods,north,biomarker,exposure,risk assessment
                Public health
                dene, first nations, biomonitoring, metals, traditional foods, north, biomarker, exposure, risk assessment

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