EPA's Great Lakes Human Health Fish Tissue Study

EPA’s Office of Water, Great Lakes National Program Office, and Office of Research and Development are collaborating to conduct the Great Lakes Human Health Fish Tissue Study.  This is the first statistically based study of fish contamination in the Great Lakes, and it adds a human health component to the ecological assessments EPA is conducting under the statistically designed National Coastal Condition Assessment (which includes the Great Lakes).  Assessment of contaminants in Great Lakes fish for human health applications involves collecting one fish composite sample from about 150 randomly selected nearshore sites (depths up to 30 m or distances up to 5 km from shore) throughout the five Great Lakes (about 30 sites per lake).  The composite samples consist of five similarly sized adult fish of the same species that are commonly consumed by humans.  Fillet tissue from each composite sample is being analyzed for mercury, perfluorinated compounds or PFCs (13 compounds, including perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid or PFOS), polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs (8 congeners), and omega-3 fatty acids (including alpha-linolenic acid or ALA, eicosapentaenoic acid or EPA, and docosahexaenoic acid or DHA).  EPA is including analysis of omega-3 fatty acids in fish fillets to obtain species-specific data on these compounds to fill an existing data gap and to identify fish with higher levels of omega-3s and potentially greater health benefits.  EPA collected the fish samples for this study from mid-May through mid-November in 2010 and received some support from Great Lakes states for this sample collection effort.  EPA anticipates completing fish tissue analysis in 2012 and having results available to report in 2013.