TY - JOUR
T1 - Endocrine disruption and differential gene expression in sentinel fish on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska
T2 - Health implications for indigenous residents
AU - von Hippel, Frank A.
AU - Miller, Pamela K.
AU - Carpenter, David O.
AU - Dillon, Danielle
AU - Smayda, Lauren
AU - Katsiadaki, Ioanna
AU - Titus, Tom A.
AU - Batzel, Peter
AU - Postlethwait, John H.
AU - Buck, C. Loren
N1 - Funding Information:
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P20GM103395 . The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Funding was also provided by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS grant numbers 1RO1ES019620 and 2RO1ES019620 ), the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) College of Arts and Sciences , and UAA's Environment and Natural Resources Institute . Conflicts of interest: none. Fish were collected under Alaska Department of Fish and Game permits SF2012-053 and SF2013-164. We thank Jesse Gologergen, Heidi Zimmer and Madelyn Peterson for assistance in the field and Victoria M. Carroll for assistance in the lab. We thank Sharon Rudolph for making Fig. S1 . We thank Elise Adams for drawing the graphical abstract. We thank the three anonymous reviewers and the Associate Editor for thoughtful comments on the manuscript. We thank the communities of St. Lawrence Island for their support and collaboration, and the members of the St. Lawrence Island Working Group for their valuable guidance of this research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2018/3
Y1 - 2018/3
N2 - People living a subsistence lifestyle in the Arctic are highly exposed to persistent organic pollutants, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Formerly Used Defense (FUD) sites are point sources of PCB pollution; the Arctic contains thousands of FUD sites, many co-located with indigenous villages. We investigated PCB profiles and biological effects in freshwater fish (Alaska blackfish [Dallia pectoralis] and ninespine stickleback [Pungitius pungitius]) living upstream and downstream of the Northeast Cape FUD site on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. Despite extensive site remediation, fish remained contaminated with PCBs. Vitellogenin concentrations in males indicated exposure to estrogenic contaminants, and some fish were hypothyroid. Downstream fish showed altered DNA methylation in gonads and altered gene expression related to DNA replication, response to DNA damage, and cell signaling. This study demonstrates that, even after site remediation, contaminants from Cold War FUD sites in remote regions of the Arctic remain a potential health threat to local residents – in this case, Yupik people who had no influence over site selection and use by the United States military. Legacy contaminants from Cold War military sites in the Arctic remain a health threat to Arctic Indigenous Peoples.
AB - People living a subsistence lifestyle in the Arctic are highly exposed to persistent organic pollutants, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Formerly Used Defense (FUD) sites are point sources of PCB pollution; the Arctic contains thousands of FUD sites, many co-located with indigenous villages. We investigated PCB profiles and biological effects in freshwater fish (Alaska blackfish [Dallia pectoralis] and ninespine stickleback [Pungitius pungitius]) living upstream and downstream of the Northeast Cape FUD site on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. Despite extensive site remediation, fish remained contaminated with PCBs. Vitellogenin concentrations in males indicated exposure to estrogenic contaminants, and some fish were hypothyroid. Downstream fish showed altered DNA methylation in gonads and altered gene expression related to DNA replication, response to DNA damage, and cell signaling. This study demonstrates that, even after site remediation, contaminants from Cold War FUD sites in remote regions of the Arctic remain a potential health threat to local residents – in this case, Yupik people who had no influence over site selection and use by the United States military. Legacy contaminants from Cold War military sites in the Arctic remain a health threat to Arctic Indigenous Peoples.
KW - Bering Sea
KW - FUD site
KW - Formerly used defense site
KW - Global distillation
KW - Polychlorinated biphenyls
KW - Yupik
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U2 - 10.1016/j.envpol.2017.11.054
DO - 10.1016/j.envpol.2017.11.054
M3 - Article
C2 - 29182972
AN - SCOPUS:85034860429
SN - 0269-7491
VL - 234
SP - 279
EP - 287
JO - Environmental Pollution
JF - Environmental Pollution
ER -