Arsenic biomonitoring program proposed

The Minnesota Department of Health is proposing a biomonitoring pilot project to measure arsenic levels in 100 children who live near the CMC Heartland Site near 28th Street and Hiawatha Avenue. Arsenic-containing pesticides were manufactured and stored at the site between 1938 and 1963.

The pilot project will help to determine whether children in South Minneapolis have elevated levels of arsenic in their bodies. For those children who are found to have elevated arsenic levels, their parents or guardians will be advised to bring the child to a health care provider for follow-up. Also, the family will be given information to help them determine all of the ways they might be exposed to arsenic (including soil, lumber, foods and cigarette smoke) and to take steps to reduce the exposure in the future.

A public meeting about the project will be held on Thursday, Dec. 6, at 7 p.m. at the Midtown YWCA (2121 E. Lake St.) Department of Health staff will present the plans for the pilot projects, as well as solicit comments on the proposal.
“It’s our hope that this public meeting will help us design the best project possible for the community, “ said Mary Manning, Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Division director. “In addition, results from the pilot project will help us make recommendations about further public health actions, including the possibility of developing an ongoing biomonitoring program at MDH.”

This pilot project stems from state legislation that was passed in 2007, directing MDH to develop and implement a statewide Environmental Health Tracking and Biomonitoring program.

Environmental health tracking is the ongoing collection, integration, analysis and dissemination of data on human exposures to chemicals in the environment and on diseases potentially caused or aggravated by these chemicals. Data for environmental health tracking are generally gathered from existing sources, such as statewide surveys and assessments. When tracked over time, environmental health data will help researchers, policy makers and public health authorities to recognize patterns, identify populations that are most affected, and identify actions to protect public health.

Biomonitoring directly measures the amount of a chemical or chemical byproducts in people’s bodies. In order to measure the chemical, a sample of a person’s urine, hair, blood or some other body tissue or fluid is tested.
“Biomonitoring measurements can be a good way to determine exposure to a chemical—especially chemicals that linger in the body—because they indicate the amount of the chemical that actually gets into people, rather than the amount that could potentially get into them,” said Jean Johnson, Environmental Health Tracking and Biomonitoring Program director.

Biomonitoring data have the potential to show changes in exposures to chemicals over time, to identify and assess groups of people who are at high risk for exposure and to help decision makers target interventions to reduce exposure to chemicals in the environment. Biomonitoring projects measure only the exposure to chemicals and are not able to determine whether specific illnesses or health conditions are caused by exposure to those chemicals.
The legislation that created the program directed the MDH to implement four biomonitoring pilot projects, including one in a community likely to have been exposed to arsenic. South Minneapolis was chosen as the site for the arsenic project because of the levels of contamination in the soil in many yards in the area and the concerns among community members. MDH made the selection in consultation with a scientific advisory panel.

The South Minneapolis biomonitoring project will be the first of the four pilot projects. Participation is voluntary. However, participants will be chosen based on a number of demographic and exposure factors in order to yield the most meaningful data for the projects, Johnson said.

Input from the public meeting will be presented to the scientific advisory panel on Dec. 17. The panel will make recommendations to the commissioner of health on the design of the project, which will likely begin in the summer of 2008.