Benzo[a]pyrene (BaP), a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), is a known human carcinogen. In non-smoking adults greater than 95% of BaP exposure is through diet. The carcinogenicity of BaP is utilized by the U.S. EPA to assess relative potency of complex PAH mixtures. PAH relative potency factors (RPFs, BaP = 1) are determined from high dose animal data. We employed accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) to determine pharmacokinetics of [14C]-BaP in humans following dosing with 46 ng (an order of magnitude lower than human dietary daily exposure and million-fold lower than animal cancer models). To assess the impact of co-administration of food with a complex PAH mixture, humans were dosed with 46 ng of [14C]-BaP with or without smoked salmon. Subjects were asked to avoid high BaP-containing diets and a 3-day dietary questionnaire given to assess dietary exposure prior to dosing and three days post-dosing with [14C]-BaP. Co-administration of smoked salmon, containing a complex mixture of PAHs with an RPF of 460 ng BaPeq, reduced and delayed absorption. Administration of canned commercial salmon, containing very low amounts of PAHs, showed the impacts on pharmacokinetics were not due to high amounts of PAHs but rather a food matrix effect.

One expectation of community-based participatory research (CBPR) is participant access to study results. However, reporting experimental data produced by studies involving biological measurements in the absence of clinical relevance can be challenging to scientists and participants. We applied best practices in data sharing to report the results of a study designed to explore polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons absorption, metabolism, and excretion following consumption of traditionally smoked salmon by members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR). A dietary exposure study was developed, in which nine Tribal members consumed 50g of traditionally smoked salmon and provided repeated urine samples over 24 hours. During recruitment, participants requested access to their data following analysis. Disclosing data is an important element of CBPR and must be treated with the same rigor as that given to the data analysis. The field of data disclosure is relatively new, but when handled correctly can improve education within the community, reduce distrust, and enhance environmental health literacy. Using the results from this study, we suggest mechanisms for sharing data with a Tribal community.

The relative influences of trans-Pacific and regional atmospheric transport on measured concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), PAH derivatives (nitro- (NPAH) and oxy-(OPAH)), organic carbon (OC), and particulate matter (PM) less than 2.5 μm in diameter (PM2.5) were investigated in the Pacific Northwest, U.S. in 2010–2011. Ambient high volume PM2.5 air samples were collected at two sites in the Pacific Northwest: (1.) Mount Bachelor Observatory (MBO) in the Oregon Cascade Range (2763 m above sea level (asl)) and 2.) Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) in the Columbia River Gorge (CRG) (954 m asl). At MBO, the 1,8-dinitropyrene concentration was significantly positively correlated with the time a sampled air mass spent over Asia, suggesting that this NPAH may be a good marker for trans-Pacific atmospheric transport. At CTUIR, NOx, CO2, and SO2 emissions from a 585 MW coal fired power plant, in Boardman OR, were found to be significantly positively correlated with PAH, OPAH, NPAH, OC, and PM2.5 concentrations. By comparing the Boardman Plant operational time frames when the plant was operating to when it was shut down, the plant was found to contribute a large percentage of the measured PAH (67%), NPAH (91%), OPAH (54%), PM2.5 (39%), and OC (38%) concentrations at CTUIR and the CRG prior to Spring 2011 and likely masked trans-Pacific atmospheric transport events to the CRG. Upgrades installed to the Boardman Plant in the spring of 2011 dramatically reduced the plant's contribution to PAH and OPAH concentrations (by ∼72% and ∼40%, respectively) at CTUIR and the CRG, but not NPAH, PM2.5 or OC concentrations.

A method was developed for the measurement of 19 parent PAHs (PAHs) and 34 hydroxylated PAHs (OH-PAHs) in urine and personal air samples of particulate matter less than 2.5 μm in diameter (PM₂.₅) using GC-MS and validated using NIST SRM 3672 (Organic Contaminants in Smoker's Urine) and SRM 3673 (Organic Contaminants in Nonsmoker's Urine). The method was used to measure PAHs and OH-PAHs in urine and personal PM₂.₅ samples collected from the operators of two different fish smoking facilities (tipi and smoke shed) burning two different wood types (alder and apple) on the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) while they smoked salmon. Urine samples were spiked with β-glucuronidase/arylsulfatase to hydrolyze the conjugates of OH-PAHs and the PAHs and OH-PAHs were extracted using Plexa and C18 solid phases, in series. The 34 OH-PAHs were derivatized using MTBSTFA, and the mixture was measured by GC-MS. The personal PM₂.₅ samples were extracted using pressurized liquid extraction, derivatized with MTBSTFA and analyzed by GC-MS for PAHs and OH-PAHs. Fourteen isotopically labeled surrogates were added to accurately quantify PAHs and OH-PAHs in the urine and PM₂.₅ samples and three isotopically labeled internal standards were used to calculate the recovery of the surrogates. Estimated detection limits in urine ranged from 6.0 to 181 pg/ml for OH-PAHs and from 3.0 to 90 pg/ml for PAHs, and, in PM₂.₅, they ranged from 5.2 to 155 pg/m(3) for OH-PAHs and from 2.5 to 77 pg/m(3) for PAHs. The results showed an increase in OH-PAH concentrations in urine after 6h of fish smoking and an increase in PAH concentrations in air within each smoking facility. In general, the PAH exposure in the smoke shed was higher than in the tipi and the PAH exposure from burning apple wood was higher than burning alder.

Few studies have been published on the excretion rates of parent polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and hydroxy-polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (OH-PAHs) following oral exposure. This study investigated the metabolism and excretion rates of 4 parent PAHs and 10 OH-PAHs after the consumption of smoked salmon. Nine members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation consumed 50g of traditionally smoked salmon with breakfast and five urine samples were collected during the following 24h. The concentrations of OH-PAHs increased from 43.9μg/g creatinine for 2-OH-Nap to 349ng/g creatinine for 1-OH-Pyr, 3 to 6h post-consumption. Despite volunteers following a restricted diet, there appeared to be a secondary source of naphthalene and fluorene, which led to excretion efficiencies greater than 100%. For the parent PAHs that were detected in urine, the excretion efficiencies ranged from 13% for phenanthrene (and its metabolite) to 240% for naphthalene (and its metabolites). The half-lives for PAHs ranged from 1.4h for retene to 3.3h for pyrene. The half-lives for OH-PAHs were higher and ranged from 1.7h for 9-OH-fluorene to 7.0h for 3-OH-fluorene. The concentrations of most parent PAHs, and their metabolites, returned to the background levels 24h post-consumption.

Indigenous cultures perceive the natural environment as an essential link between traditional cultural practices, social connectedness, identity, and health. Many tribal communities face substantial health disparities related to exposure to environmental hazards. Our study used qualitative methods to better understand the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) members' perspectives about their environment and its connections with their health including views on environmental health hazards. Three 90-minute focus group sessions with a total of 27 participants were held to elicit opinions on meanings of health and how the environment interacts with health. A systematic text analysis was used to derive themes across focus groups. Participants expressed a holistic view of health that included environmental, physical, mental, spiritual, and social components. A healthy natural environment was identified as an essential component of a healthy individual and a healthy community. Participants also described many environmental health concerns including second-hand smoke, outdoor smoke, diesel exhaust, mold, pesticides, contaminated natural foods, and toxic wastes from the Hanford nuclear site and methamphetamine labs. Many believe the identified environmental hazards contribute to diseases in their community. The natural environment is an important resource to CTUIR members and plays an integral role in achieving and maintaining health. Knowledge about the values and concerns of the community are useful to the tribal and federal governments, health professionals, environmental health practitioners, and community members who seek to achieve sustainable and healthy rural Native communities.

Native American cultures, genetics, nutrition, and ways of life co-evolved with their natural systems through thousands of years. This process has resulted in seamless ecocultural systems of humans, plants, animals, rivers, landforms, and airsheds. These ecocultural systems have also provided its peoples with unique and valid environmental management science that has sustained the peoples and their resources for thousands of years. This resource-based perspective could form the basis of environmental justice risk assessment methodology in Indian Country. Cumulative impacts to tribal cultures are a combination of pre-existing stressors (existing conditions or co-risk factors) and any other contamination or new activity that affects environmental quality. Characterizing risks or impacts in Indian Country entails telling the cumulative story about risks to Trust resources and a cultural way of life. Equity assessments could also be performed in a way that describes these systems-level cumulative risks/impacts. This requires improvements in metrics based on an understanding of the unbreakable ties between people, their cultures, and their resources. Specific recommendations are presented for performing equity assessments in Indian Country and for developing a Risk Ethics discipline.

The article provides an overview of methods that can be used to develop exposure scenarios for unique tribal natural resource usage patterns. Exposure scenarios are used to evaluate the degree of environmental contact experienced by people with different patterns of lifestyle activities, such as residence, recreation, or work. In 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton's Executive Order 12898 recognized that disproportionately high exposures could be incurred by people with traditional subsistence lifestyles because of their more intensive contact with natural resources. Since then, we have developed several tribal exposure scenarios that reflect tribal-specific traditional lifeways. These scenarios are not necessarily intended to capture contemporary resource patterns, but to describe how the resources were used before contamination or degradation, and will be used once again in fully traditional ways after cleanup and restoration. The direct exposure factors for inhalation and soil ingestion rates are the same in each tribal scenario, but the diets are unique to each tribe and its local ecology, natural foods, and traditional practices. Scenarios, in part or in whole, also have other applications, such as developing environmental standards, evaluating disproportionate exposures, developing sampling plans, planning for climate change, or evaluating service flows as part of natural resource damage assessments.

Although it is known that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) can be found in smoked meats, little is known about their prevalence in Native American smoked fish. In this work, the effect of traditional Native American fish smoking methods on dietary exposure to PAHs and possible risks to human health has been assessed. Smoking methods considered smoking structure (tipi or shed) and wood type (apple or alder). Neither smoking structure nor wood type accounted for differences in smoked salmon content of 33 PAHs. Carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic PAH loads in traditionally smoked salmon were 40-430 times higher than those measured in commercial products. Dietary exposure to PAHs could result in excess lifetime cancer risks between 1 × 10(-5) and 1 × 10(-4) at a daily consumption rate of 5 g d(-1) and could approach 1 × 10(-2) at 300 g d(-1). Hazard indexes approached 0.005 at 5 g d(-1), or approximately 0.3 at 300 g d(-1). Levels of PAHs present in smoked salmon prepared using traditional Native American methods may pose elevated cancer risks if consumed at high consumption rates over many years.

The goal of environmental justice (EJ) is for all peoples to achieve the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards. This suggests that impacts should be evaluated from the perspective of the affected community because only the community truly knows what is at risk from adverse impacts. If the EJ assessment is based solely on spatial analysis of demographic data with a criterion that 20% of a local community must be of a single ethnic group or below a certain income level in order to be recognized as an environmental justice community, then impacts to tribal natural resources and well- being will often be overlooked or significantly underestimated. When American Indian tribes and tribal resources are affected on or off a reservation, a proper impact assessment requires considerations of natural resource trusteeship, federal fiduciary trust obligations across ceded or usual and accustomed areas, and the spatial distribution of natural resources that are potentially impacted. This can be done within a standard National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) format by adding tribal narratives and tribal impact measures.

The goal of environmental justice (EJ) is for all peoples to achieve the same degree of protection from environmental health hazards. Although each tribe is an independent sovereign nation and a single federal approach may not suit all tribes, this article presents an improved method for evaluating and quantifying potentially disproportionate impacts in tribal communities under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). A critical first step in evaluating disproportionate impacts in tribal communities might be to determine the condition of natural resources used by, important to, or appertaining to tribes. The ecocultural system or ethno-habitat relevant to the tribe and its resource interests can be described in narrative and quantitative terms. The features, attributes, goods, and services provided by the baseline conditions of the ethno-habitat and its resources can be described. Examples of quantifiable measures to evaluate interruptions in service flow and risks to traditional lifeways over multiple generations are suggested. A subsistence exposure scenario and risk assessment based on traditional lifeways can be included in this step, since risks to tribal members are likely to be higher than to non-native persons due to differences in the frequency and intensity of environmental contact. To evaluate cumulative impacts, existing co-risk factors that make the community more vulnerable can also be considered.

BACKGROUND:When conducting research with American Indian tribes, informed consent beyond conventional institutional review board (IRB) review is needed because of the potential for adverse consequences at a community or governmental level that are unrecognized by academic researchers. OBJECTIVES:In this article, we review sovereignty, research ethics, and data-sharing considerations when doing community-based participatory health-related or natural-resource-related research with American Indian nations and present a model material and data-sharing agreement that meets tribal and university requirements. DISCUSSION:Only tribal nations themselves can identify potential adverse outcomes, and they can do this only if they understand the assumptions and methods of the proposed research. Tribes must be truly equal partners in study design, data collection, interpretation, and publication. Advances in protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) are also applicable to IRB reviews, as are principles of sovereignty and indigenous rights, all of which affect data ownership and control. CONCLUSIONS:Academic researchers engaged in tribal projects should become familiar with all three areas: sovereignty, ethics and informed consent, and IPR. We recommend developing an agreement with tribal partners that reflects both health-related IRB and natural-resource-related IPR considerations.

The concept that all peoples should have their voices heard on matters that affect their well‐being is at the core of environmental justice (EJ). The inability of some people of small towns, rural areas, minority, and low‐income communities, to become involved in environmental decisions is sometimes due to a lack of information. We provide a template for the ecological information that is essential to examine environmental risks to EJ populations within average communities, using case studies from South Carolina (Savannah River, a DOE site with minority impacts), Washington (Hanford, a DOE site with Native American impacts), and New Jersey (nonpoint, urbanized community pollution). While the basic ecological and public health information needs for risk evaluations and assessments are well described, less attention has been focused on standardizing information about EJ communities or EJ populations within larger communities. We suggest that information needed about EJ communities and populations includes demographics, consumptive and nonconsumptive uses of their regional environment (for example, maintenance and cosmetic, medicinal/religious/cultural uses), eco‐dependency webs, and eco‐cultural attributes. A purely demographics approach might not even identify EJ populations or neighborhoods, much less their spatial relation to the impact source or to each other. Using information from three case studies, we illustrate that some information is readily available (e.g., consumption rates for standard items such as fish), but there is less information about medicinal, cultural, religious, eco‐cultural dependency webs, and eco‐cultural attributes, all of which depend in some way on intact, functioning, and healthy ecosystems.

Risks from mercury and other contaminants in fish for a large Columbia River dataset are evaluated in this paper for a range of consumption rates. Extensive ethnohistorical, nutritional, recent ethnographic surveys, and other documentation was reviewed to confirm previous determinations that the traditional subsistence fish consumption rate is 500 pounds per capita annually, or 620 g per day (gpd). Lower comtemporary consumption rates for other population subsets are also discussed. The causes of the current suppression of fish consumption are discussed and the cultural, educational, social, and trade and economic impacts of the loss of fish are considered. Action levels for mercury for riverine Tribes in the Columbia Basin are suggested at 0.1 ppm or less based on the combined risk from mercury plus other contaminants, the higher fish consumption rates, the existing cultural deficit due to loss of salmon and other stressors, the health benefits of fish, and the cultural and economic importance of fish. The goal of fish advisories is to reduce fish consumption even further, which shifts the burden of avoiding risk to the very people who already bear the burdens of contaminant exposure, socio-economic impacts and cultural loss. However, because Tribal communities often do not have the choice of giving up more food, income, religion, culture, and heritage in order to avoid contamination, they are forced into choosing between culture and health. Many tribal members choose to incur chemical risk rather than giving up their culture and religion. We believe that lowering the action level for mercury is part of the federal fiduciary responsibility to American Indian Tribes.

Peoples and communities, especially indigenous communities, are forced to deal with an increasingly complex set of environmental, social, cultural, and economic problems related to pollution. It is important to use evaluation tools that reflect the values and perspectives of the affected peoples, and which can evaluate risks and impacts to the natural resource base upon which we all depend. Evaluation tools, such as risk assessment, are being applied to spatio-temporal systems and lifestyles for which they were not designed, so new integrating tools are needed to bridge the gap between narrow sets of endpoints and western perspectives, on the one hand, and a much broader set of endpoints and more holistic indigenous perspectives on the other hand. The perspectives and even the necessity to account for traditional Native American lifestyles have gone unnoticed in classical environmental planning and risk assessment methods. If tribal rights and resources are affected, one way to ensure that those tools reflect the appropriate values is to redesign the risk tools using traditional environmental management principles. For example, Native American communities are inseparable from their lands and resources, so evaluation of their risks from contamination must integrate human physiological and mental health, ecological health, socio-economic health, and cultural and spiritual health within a single framework. This does not mean simply adding a quality-of-life component and calling it cultural risk, or using an exposure scenario that reflects additional routes of exposures. Rather, it means beginning the assessment by understanding the entire eco-cultural system (people and biota interlocked in a co-adapted system of behaviors and ecologies that is sustainable over time but which is now severely strained even without the addition of contamination). This paper provides some suggestions for improving risk assessment through the use of dependency webs that are drawn to represent the entire eco-cultural system that is at risk, and therefore that identify more consequences of environmen*Stuart Harris is an enrolled member of Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon. With a background in Geology, he is a Natural/Cultural Resources Coordinator for the Confederated Tribes. In that role, he addresses a variety of risk issues related to the Hanford Nuclear Site. He is responsible for developing Native American exposure scenarios that reflect the lifestyles, activities and customs of his people. **Barbara L. Harper is a board-certified toxicologist, has taught toxicology and risk assessment, and has been a regulator. Her work with the Yakama Nation on Hanford issues led her and her co-author to develop methods for complex risk assessments that are culturally sensitive and more accurate for subsistence lifestyles and eco-cultural systems. Her special interest is in helping tribes build capacity in risk assessment, and environmental health and toxicology, as well as NRDA, endstates, closure, and stewardship. Stuart G. Harris1 * Barbara L. Harper2 ** Eco-Cultural Dependency Webs 92 ESPR – Environ. Sci. & Pollut. Res. • Special Issue 2 (2000) Cultural Risk Assessment and Quality of Life Issues

Exposure scenarios are a critical part of risk assessment: however, representative scenarios are not generally available for tribal communities where a traditional subsistence lifestyle and diet are relevant and actively encouraged. This article presents portions of a multipathway exposure scenario developed by AESE, Inc. in conjunction with the Spokane Tribal Cultural Resources Program. The scenario serves as the basis for a screening-level reasonable maximum exposure (RME) developed for the Midnite Uranium Mine Superfund site. The process used in developing this scenario balances the need to characterize exposures without revealing proprietary information. The scenario and resulting RME reflect the subsistence use of original and existing natural resources by a hypothetical but representative family living on the reservation at or near the mine site. The representative family lives in a house in a sparsely populated conifer forest, tends a home garden, partakes in a high rate of subsistence activities (hunting, gathering, fishing), uses a sweat lodge daily, has a regular schedule of other cultural activities, and has members employed in outdoor monitoring of natural and cultural resources. The scenario includes two largely subsistence diets based on fish or game, both of which include native plants and home-grown produce. Data gaps and sources of uncertainty are identified. Additional information that risk assessors and agencies need to understand before doing any kind of risk assessment or public health assessment in tribal situations is presented.

Lead exposure is still a national concern, and it is possible that Native Americans who live on reservations and pursue traditional lifestyles may be at higher risk through both their unique exposure profiles and their potentially greater sensitivity. A major component of the exposure assessment is the diet. For tribal members, traditional lifestyles that include native foods, medicines, and traditional practices have evolved and proven to be the most healthful over many thousands of years of coexistence with the environment. However, a completely traditional diet may not be fully available for a variety of reasons; so, one must also consider the adverse health consequences caused by the loss of healthy native foods and medicines, the contamination of remaining native foods, the inability to practice one's religion, and the possibly lower quality of the substitute diet. Health evaluations of lead exposure on reservations should therefore consider at least two types of diets in addition to the typical suburban diet: (a) traditional diets composed of native foods and medicines that would result in increased exposure if the plants and animals are contaminated and (b) disadvantaged or commodity food diets that result in widespread vitamin and mineral deficits of the sort known to increase absorption of and response to lead. Additional exposure to lead might come from reservation housing which is often older, although the prevalence of lead-based paint on reservations is unknown. The degree of physiological response could also be affected by widespread exposures to other neurotoxins (such as mercury and PCBs in fish), underlying disease patterns, and genetics. Although each of these factors is plausible, their prevalence singly or in combination is unknown. Any correlation between these risk factors and blood lead levels on reservations is also unknown. This paper begins to address these gaps by discussing the range of traditional and current diets that may exist among tribes and methods for developing a whole-lifestyle exposure scenario that is appropriate for an individual tribe. Some of the factors discussed in this paper may not apply to the large population of Native Americans who live in urban situations.

The objective of this article is to help risk assessors and managers step back from paying sole attention to finer and finer detail (e.g:, measuring nuances of a single chemical's biochemical action at the molecular level). As professionals, we must always remember that the higher service that risk assessment provides is to improve everyone's long-term well being and survival. It is especially important to note that there are many lessons all Americans should experience as early as possible. For instance, our Native American tribal members are taught from birth that we all live enmeshed within the environment, not isolated from it or superior to it. Our practical every day needs, including basic nutritional, spiritual, and economic needs, are all derived directly from a clean, functioning environment. In return, we must accept the fact that we are not masters or owners of the environment, and that we don't have dominion over ecological processes. Our relationship is best viewed as part of a human-eco-cultural system; The risks to this system as a whole must be reflected in new transparent system-level models that easily show the relationships among, and equality of, all of these elements. Transparent, user-friendly, system-level models must become standard tools in every risk assessors toolbox. Such models are being developed and have already made a difference. Tribal risk information,, in particular, needs to be produced at the community and system level, must include ecocultural metrics, and requires geospatial and temporal integration that most conventional models cannot accomplish. I expect that risk assessors, once enlightened, will insist that such models will become a required part of risk analysis in the near future.