Evaluating the Effectiveness of Fish Consumption Advisories: Modeling Prenatal, Postnatal, and Childhood Exposures to Persistent Organic Pollutants

BACKGROUND Because human exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs) occurs mainly through ingestion of contaminated food, regulatory bodies issue dietary consumption advisories to describe safe intake levels for food items of concern, particularly fish. OBJECTIVES Our study goal was to estimate the effectiveness of fish consumption advisories in reducing exposure of infants and children to POPs. METHODS We used the time-variant mechanistic model CoZMoMAN to estimate and compare prenatal, postnatal, and childhood exposure to polychlorinated biphenyl congener PCB-153 under different scenarios of maternal guideline adherence for both hypothetical constant and realistic time-variant chemical emissions. The scenarios differed in terms of length of compliance (1 vs. 5 years), extent of fish substitution (all vs. half), and replacement diet (uncontaminated produce vs. beef). We also estimated potential exposure reductions for a range of theoretical chemicals to explore how guideline effectiveness varies with a chemical's partitioning and degradation properties. RESULTS When assuming realistic time periods of advisory compliance, our findings suggest that temporarily eliminating or reducing maternal fish consumption is largely ineffective in reducing pre- and postnatal exposure to substances with long elimination half-lives in humans, especially during periods of decreasing environmental emissions. Substituting fish with beef may actually result in higher exposure to certain groups of environmental contaminants. On the other hand, advisories may be highly effective in reducing exposure to substances with elimination half-lives in humans shorter than the length of compliance. CONCLUSIONS Our model estimates suggest that fish consumption advisories are unlikely to be effective in reducing prenatal, postnatal, and childhood exposures to compounds with long elimination half-lives in humans.