Technical support document : Lake Michigan sport fish consumption advisory project : volume 1

Glenn, Barbara; Foran, Jeffery

The National Wildlife Federation's Lake Michigan Sport Fish Consumption Advisory Project was a two-year study of the human health risks that result from eating Lake Michigan sport fish. The Project technical staff included a full-time toxicologist, an environmental biologist, and graduate students in public health and natural resources. This Technical Support Document describes in detail the methodology and conclusions of the Project. Included as an appendix is a copy of the booklet, "Lake Michigan Sport Fish: Should You Eat Your Catch?" . which was designed to communicate our conclusions to the sport fisheating public. NWF has also produced a 15 minute video describing the Project's conclusions, which is available for $10.00 from NWF's Great Lakes Natural Resource Center, 802 Monroe, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48103. This Project has been the subject of intense scrutiny and criticism from many organizations and individuals interested in the Lake Michigan sport fishery. On occasion, our critics have not distinguished between the merits of our technical evaluation and the method we chose to communicate our results to Lake Michigan sport anglers and their families. This Technical Support Document addresses only the methods we employed to evaluate and quantify (where possible) the risks of eating Lake Michigan sport fish. We hope that this publication will encourage reasoned discussion about the proper methodology for evaluating the human health risks of eating contaminated sport fish. In that regard, it is important to understand that our quantitative risk assessment method is essentially the same as that used by the U.S. EPA, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to authorize the continued dumping of toxic chemicals into the Great Lakes and the resulting contamination of sport fish.