Sylvie de Grosbois

Eating tropical fruit reduces mercury exposure from fish consumption in the Brazilian Amazon

This study aimed to examine the influence of the consumption of traditional foods on the relationship between fish consumption and mercury (Hg) exposure. A 12-month prospective dietary survey was carried out with 26 adult women from a fish-eating community in the Brazilian Amazon. Food ingestion was determined using a daily food diary, and total hair Hg levels were assessed for each month through sequential analyses using cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometry. Simple and multiple regression analyses showed that the strong relationship between fish consumption and Hg exposure was significantly modified by fruit consumption: for the same number of fish meals, those who ate more tropical fruits had lower hair mercury levels. The findings of this study indicate different ways of maintaining fish consumption while reducing Hg exposure in the Amazon. A number of phytochemicals and nutritional fibers present in fruits might be interacting with Hg in several ways: absorption and excretion, transport, binding to target proteins, metabolism, and sequestration. More studies are required on larger populations to further elucidate the extent and public health implications of the use of fruits to counteract the toxic action of methylmercury.

New Evidence on Variations of Human Body Burden of Methylmercury from Fish Consumption

Epidemiologic studies commonly use mercury (Hg) level in hair as a valid proxy to estimate human exposure to methylmercury (MeHg) through fish consumption. This study presents the results yielded by a complete data set on fish consumption habits, Hg levels in edible fish resources, and corresponding Hg accumulation in hair, gathered in three distinct communities of eastern Canada. For one of these communities, the average hair Hg concentration was 14 times less than the expected value based on calculated daily oral exposure and current knowledge of MeHg metabolism. This finding could be explained by differences in specific genetic characteristics and/or interactive effects of other dietary components.

Women workers confront one-eyed science: building alliances to improve women's occupational health.

SUMMARY Women suffer many health problems related to their work, but attempts to improve their situation face obstacles at two levels: recognition of their problems and ability to organize to prevent them. Recognition by occupational health specialists has been delayed due in part to: A perception that womens issues have been included in research focussed on male workers; pressure to deal with more visible issues of mortality and well-established illness; ignorance of womens working conditions; methodological biases and inadequacies. Recognition by unions is slowed when women and their concerns are absent from union membership and/or governing structures. Feminist health advocates have not often participated in these struggles, due to social class differences and difficulties in linking with some male-dominated unions. Also, due to the wide variety of hazardous working conditions, they do not emerge from population-based analyses of health determinants in the same way as do domestic violence, tobacco or poverty. The authors describe three alliances necessary for successful research, policy and practice in womens occupational health: between feminist and working-class organizations; between feminists and occupational health scientists; between researchers and women workers.

An Ecosystem Approach to Describe the Mercury Issue in Canada: From Mercury Sources to Human Health

It has been decades now since the international scientific community initially raised the issue of mercury (Hg) contamination in the global environment. The presence of Hg in ecosystems is ubiquitous, even in the absence of local/regional contamination point sources. Almost all fish consumers (occasional or frequent) are exposed to this contaminant. Governments of the industrialized countries have invested considerable financial and human resources, in order to better understand the biogeochemical behavior and cycling of Hg and its impacts on the health of populations. Indeed, our knowledge of the sources and fate of this pollutant has greatly evolved since these early reports. Numerous protocols, technical documents, epidemiological and clinical studies, detailing precise aspects of the Hg cycle have been published. However, given the complexity of environmental processes leading to the accumulation of Hg in fish tissue, and the relative importance of fish as a protein source among communities, most available literature fails to fully evaluate the level of risk to health (and/or the health benefits related to fish consumption) encountered by fish consumers in their daily lives. This paper summarizes the learning acquired through a wide-scale integrated study of the mercury (Hg) pathways in lake environments of three distinct regions located in Eastern Canada : Lake St. Pierre (LSP), Labrador (Lab), and Abitibi (Ab). This research was accomplished by a multidisciplinary team of researchers assembled under the auspice of the Collaborative Mercury Research Network (COMERN), a major Canadian initiative supported by numerous universities and government agencies throughout the country. The prime focus of the study was to link human exposure to Hg with particular local/regional environmental and socioeconomic characteristics and settings. Two conditions must co-occur to define a situation where higher Hg exposure can be identified for populations/sub-populations/ groups : Frequent fish consumption;Mercury levels of concern in the edible fish resource.

Human exposure to mercury as a consequence of landscape management and socio-economical behaviors: Three case studies in Canada

We have launched in 2001 the NSERC-supported pan-Canadian Collaborative Mercury Research Network. This COMERN project addresses the urgent need for the development of a framework enabling researchers, political stakeholders, and communities concerned by the mercury question to evolve towards an interdisciplinary association capable of synergistically combining our knowledge on Hg into an original synthesis. We are presently working at developing a simple index representative of the specific vulnerability of an ecosystem to Hg bioaccumulation and subsequent transfer to humans. This index includes two concepts: (1) the sensitivity to bioaccumulation, induced and influenced by factors such as the Hg loading, the different transport and methylation processes, and human activities and (2) the adaptability of the ecosystem, an evaluation of its resilience, or its capacity to recover and/or to cope with the contamination, taking into account the social and political resources within the communities impacted. We started to apply this approach to four distinct case studies representative of the large spectrums of both Hg contamination and Hg exposure through fish consumption in Canada, i.e. sports fishers of lakes of the boreal forest, commercial fishers of the industrialized region of the St Lawrence River, first nation communities in Labrador and seafood consumers of the Bay of Fundy.