Mosites Emily, Rodriguez Ernesto, Caudill Samuel P, Hennessy Thomas W, Berner James
Arctic Investigations Program, Division of Preparedness and Emerging Infections, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Anchorage, AK, USA.
Department of Global Environmental Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Int J Circumpolar Health. 2020 Dec;79(1):1726256. doi: 10.1080/22423982.2020.1726256.
Biomonitoring for heavy metals is important to assess health risks, especially in Arctic communities where rural residents rely on locally harvested foods. However, laboratory testing for blood contaminants is expensive and might not be sustainable for long-term monitoring. We assessed whether pooled specimen biomonitoring could be a part of a plan for blood contaminant surveillance among pregnant women in rural Alaska using existing blood mercury level data from three cross sectional studies of pregnant women. We applied a hypothetical pooled specimen template stratified into 8 demographic groups based on age, coastal or inland residence, and pre-pregnancy weight. The hypothetical geometric mean blood mercury levels were similar to the individual-level geometric means. However, the 95% confidence intervals were much wider for the hypothetical geometric means compared to the true geometric means. Although the variability that resulted from pooling specimens using a small sample made it difficult to compare demographic groups to each other, pooled specimen results could be an accurate reflection of the population burden of mercury contamination in the Arctic in the context of large numbers of biomonitoring samples.
对重金属进行生物监测对于评估健康风险非常重要，尤其是在北极地区的社区，那里的农村居民依赖当地收获的食物。然而，对血液污染物进行实验室检测成本高昂，可能无法长期持续用于监测。我们利用来自三项孕妇横断面研究的现有血汞水平数据，评估了合并样本生物监测是否可以成为阿拉斯加农村地区孕妇血液污染物监测计划的一部分。我们应用了一个假设的合并样本模板，该模板根据年龄、沿海或内陆居住情况以及孕前体重分为8个人口统计学组。假设的几何平均血汞水平与个体水平的几何平均水平相似。然而，与真实几何均值相比，假设几何均值的95%置信区间要宽得多。尽管使用小样本合并样本所导致的变异性使得难以相互比较人口统计学组，但在大量生物监测样本的背景下，合并样本结果可能准确反映北极地区汞污染的人群负担。
