Concentrations and Latitudinal Variations of PBDEs in First Nation Peoples of the James Bay Region
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Concerns regarding the persistence, bioaccumulation, long-range transport, and adverse health effects of polybrominated dipheyl ethers (PBDEs) have recently come to light. PBDEs are quickly becoming a ubiquitous pollutant and have been found globally in sediment, aquatic mammals, fish, bird eggs, human milk, serum, and adipose tissue. Due to their persistence and lipophilicity, PBDEs may biomagnify through the food chain and could pose a danger to those who consume these contaminated animals. \n \nMany First Nation communities in the James Bay region rely in part on a subsistence diet; therefore, these communities have the potential to carry high levels of PBDEs. Additionally, PBDEs have been shown to be preferentially deposited in the sub-Arctic, making this contaminant of particular interest to the James Bay region of northern Ontario and Quebec, Canada. \n \nBy analyzing PBDE body burden (plasma), this contaminant was characterized with regards to its latitudinal variation and concentration. The study established a baseline PBDE level in the communities of the James Bay region and determined concentrations in the traditional foods of the First Nation communities located in the Mushkegowuk Territory of sub-Arctic Canada, to examine potential routes of exposure. \n \nThe PBDE body burden was found to be low in the Mushkegowuk communities when compared to more northern communities in Canada. Similarly, PBDE body burden in the US and southern Canada is higher than those of the James Bay region. The body burdens of the James Bay Cree are similar to Japanese and Swedish levels. Analysis of traditional foods shows relatively elevated levels of PBDEs in certain game species such as whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis), mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos), and moose (Alces alces) compared to other traditional foods from the same area. \n \nData in this thesis can be used for human biomonitoring purposes and the animal data can be combined with consumption data in order to assess the contribution of PBDEs to body burden from a First Nation diet as well as provide guidance when developing safety guidelines for the consumption of traditional foods. While the sub-arctic has been identified as an environmental sink for PBDEs, the levels found in this study indicate that long-range transportation and dietary biomagnification of the contaminant may not be the primary exposure pathway. This may be due to low bioavailability of the contaminant, rapid metabolism, or alternate sources of exposure and should be investigated in future studies.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".