Determinants of human hair mercury, blood mercury, blood selenium, and plasma omega-3 fatty acid levels within northern Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
To address community concerns within northern Canada, human biomonitoring projects measured concentrations of environmental contaminants and nutrients in human biological samples from the Dehcho and Sahtú regions of the Northwest Territories and Old Crow, Yukon. Hair and blood samples were analyzed for total mercury, blood was analyzed for selenium, and plasma was analyzed for eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Demographic and dietary characteristics associated with concentrations of these biomarkers, within and between the northern Canadian regions sampled, were assessed. Spearman correlations between biomarker concentrations were calculated, geometric mean biomarker concentrations were compared across strata of participant characteristics (stratified by region), and associations were further examined in multivariable models. Participant age and consumption of at least one species of fish and waterfowl were associated with mercury (adjusted R 2 = 0.26 for hair mercury) and EPA + DHA (adjusted R 2 = 0.33) biomarker concentrations in the final models. Region and consumption of several fish species as well as caribou livers and kidneys were associated with blood selenium concentrations in the final model (adjusted R 2 = 0.32). Mercury and EPA + DHA biomarker concentrations were moderately/strongly correlated across all three regions (r s = 0.36 to 0.65) while correlations with selenium were inconsistent (r s = 0.04 to 0.28). These findings provide information on the demographic/dietary factors that may be associated with mercury, selenium, and EPA + DHA biomarker concentrations in the northern study regions and highlight the need to consider the nutritional benefits of traditional foods while seeking to understand and reduce the risks of contaminant exposure. • Human biomonitoring was conducted in northern First Nations within Canada. • Biomarkers in: hair (mercury), whole blood (selenium, mercury), plasma (EPA + DHA). • Concentrations of total mercury, selenium, and EPA + DHA were correlated. • Several dietary/demographic variables were associated with biomarker concentrations. • Findings support the community-partnered environmental monitoring of contaminants.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 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) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".