Probabilistic risk assessment for high-end consumers of seafood on the northeastern Gulf coast

Abstract

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (April 20, 2010) caused concern regarding Gulf seafood safety. Communities were skeptical of governmental risk assessments because they did not take into account the higher consumption of seafood along coastal areas. The objective of this study was to perform a probabilistic risk assessment based on the consumption rates of high-end consumers of Gulf seafood. We utilized seafood consumption data from five communities across the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. This study collected finfish, shrimp, blue crab, and oysters from these communities and analyzed their tissues for polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). A probabilistic risk assessment was performed using population-specific seafood consumption rates and body weights for commercial fishers, recreational fishers, and a Filipino-American community. For non-cancer effects, 95 th percentile hazard quotients for these targeted populations ranged between 1.84E-04 to 5.39E-03 for individual seafood types. The 95 th percentile hazard indices for total seafood consumption ranged from 3.45E-03 to 8.41E-03. Based on total seafood consumption, highest hazard indices were modeled for the Filipino-American community followed by commercial and recreational fishers. Despite higher consumption rates, hazard indices for the high-end consumers targeted in this study were two to three orders of magnitude below the regulatory limit of 1.

Increased long-term health risks attributable to select volatile organic compounds in residential indoor air in southeast Louisiana

“…The Akaike Information Criterion was used to select the best distributional fit along with the distributional parameters for each VOC 46 . These distributions were then used to carry out non-cancer and cancer risk simulations using 100,000 iterations with a Latin Hypercube sampling type and a Mersenne Twister random number generator 42 , 47 . Non-cancer risks were assessed using the hazard quotient (HQ) approach and the following equation, This generates a unitless ratio and risks are considered excessive if the HQ > 1.…”

Exposure Assessment of methyl mercury from consumption of fish and seafood in Peninsular Malaysia

“…There have been studies conducted to support regulatory analysis that rely on quantitative fish consumption estimates based on representative populations survey (von Stackelberg et al 2017) or involved a specific or broad range of seafood species consumed by population (Mehouel et al 2019;Budiyanto et al 2019;Barone et al 2015;Al-Mughairi et al 2013), collected from specific or different locations (Bhupander and Mukherjee 2011;Uratno et al 2018) or wild and farm species (Chouvelon et al 2009). There are also studies that involved vulnerable groups of pregnant women, children below 17 years old, women of child-bearing age, and other high-risk consumers (Stuchal et al 2019;You et al 2018;Kuras et al 2017;Juric et al 2017;Andrew et al 2016;Whyte et al 2009). Data from other sources are also reported for common fish eaten or fish parts or organs, for example, fish muscle, liver, gills, kidney, and others (Matos et al 2018;Zolfaghari 2018).…”