EPA's 2014 Flame Retardant Assessments - A Case For Using Tribal-Relevant Exposure as a Default
Author:
Dianne Barton
Date Published:
2014
Description:
EPA’s assessment presents a thorough review of reported PBDE concentrations in fish tissue from a wide variety of sources. The review finds that concentration of PBDEs in fish from open water environments are much higher (10-1000 ppb) than farmed fish or fish obtained from marketplaces (1-5 ppb). Faced with choosing a nationally representative number, the authors used a sampling of fish from supermarkets in Dallas, TX for the dose assessment of exposure from fish (0.32 ppb for finfish and 5.7 ppb for shellfish) and used a fish consumption rate of 11.6 grams/day for finfish and 3.8 grams/day for shellfish. Tribal exposure to PBDEs are substantially underestimated using these assumptions. Fish consumption rates in the Pacific Northwest can be orders of magnitude higher than the general population, and fish is generally harvested from open water environments.
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