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Biomonitoring Resource Center

Overview | Profiles | Presentations | Tool Kit | Report: Taking It All In | NewsHour Transcript

Deciding Whether and How to Document Chemicals in Your Community

A Community Monitoring Decision Tool

Community groups use different monitoring tools to document the existence of toxic chemicals in their communities, the extent that members of the community are exposed to this pollution, and in some instances, the impacts of chemical exposure. Monitoring can help validate what people in the community already know or suspect about chemical exposures. It can also provide information supporting the need for cleanup, better regulation, or efforts to eliminate particular types of exposure in the community. Monitoring can also strengthen community organizing and develop community support for various campaigns. But monitoring often requires substantial time and financial resources. Sometimes the data collected by communities are not considered valid, or may be dismissed or misinterpreted by corporate interests or government authorities.

Groups considering a community monitoring study need to think carefully about what kinds of monitoring tools will serve them best. Possible monitoring approaches include body burden testing, air monitoring, house dust monitoring, water monitoring, food/product monitoring and other environmental monitoring. Below are some questions that will help your group decide what kind of monitoring may be useful to your community.

Community Monitoring Issues to Consider

1. What question are you trying to answer about toxic chemical exposures? How will the answer make your work to protect the community from toxic chemicals more effective? Will the community monitoring process be useful in educating and uniting your community around the issue of toxic exposures?
2. What chemical or set of chemicals would you be looking for, and why? Is there a way to link these chemicals to a particular source of exposure (for example, industrial plant, pesticide spraying, etc.)
3. Is it possible or likely that exposures are from distant rather than local sources? If so, are there ways to resolve the uncertainty and determine the true source of exposure?
4. What is the most accurate and most useful way to measure the presence and concentration of these chemicals? Why do think that this is the most useful way to measure these chemicals?

Body Burden Monitoring Issues to Consider

Body burden monitoring involves documenting chemicals and their concentrations in human biospecimens such as blood, urine, bone, hair, breastmilk, meconium, adipose tissue, saliva, or semen. The choice of what body fluid or tissue to monitor depends on a number of factors, including consideration of where certain toxic chemicals or their metabolites may be found. Body burden monitoring provides the ultimate proof of exposure to toxic chemicals, but the data collected do not usually indicate specific pathways or sources of exposure. Furthermore, determination of exposure does not, by itself, imply that the exposure has caused harm. The following issues are important when considering using body burden testing as a community monitoring tool.

5. Is it possible to find the chemical in people's bodies? If so, where is it found and what is the best kind of testing for this particular chemical (for example, blood, breast milk, urine, saliva, meconium, hair, umbilical cord blood, hand swipes, etc.)
6. What health effects have been linked to this chemical (both known and suspected links)? At what levels of exposure? Are there other reasons to be concerned about exposure to this chemical, even if health effects have not been documented (for example, it persists in the body for a long time, is found in many people, is at high levels in children, etc.)?
7. What body burden studies have already been done on this chemical?
8. Have other body burden or environmental monitoring studies been done in your community? If so, are the data accessible to you? What was the purpose of the other studies? How were the data used?
9. Ideally who would you test, and why? (for example, women, children, members of a specific neighborhood). How many people would you test?
10. What kind of resources does your group have to work on a monitoring project (for example, staff time, technical resources, partner groups, funds)?
11. What additional resources would you need? Would it be useful to talk to:

___ other groups who have engaged in body burden monitoring?
___ an epidemiologist, a scientist/researcher who has been involved in body burden monitoring?
___ an expert in the ethical considerations of community monitoring?
___ a media expert familiar with body burden monitoring projects?
___ an expert in torts or liability cases?

12. Would a body burden study be done in collaboration with an academic researcher? If so, does your group have any existing contacts?
13. When would you like to do this project and how long would it take?
14. How would the community be involved in the design of the project and decisions about how the results are used? Who would control decisions about media messages and campaigns? How would you address issues of data ownership and privacy? Do you plan to communicate data results to the participants in the body burden monitoring study?
15. How would you help individuals prepare for the emotional impacts of their results?
16. Are there special cultural needs or circumstances in your community (for example, language, spiritual beliefs, traditional practices, etc.)?
17. What would be the added benefits of body burden monitoring in your community (for example, educating the community, collecting additional information, other organizing goals, prioritizing concerns, deciding whether or not a problem exists)?
18. What are the potential disadvantages of body burden monitoring in your community? For example, will the data about workers in your community threaten their employment? Are there health insurance considerations? What if body burden monitoring does not confirm that there is a problem - either because the suspected problem doesn't exist, or because technical and design limits of the study mean monitoring fails to identify the problem, even when it does exist?
19. How could your monitoring project benefit the people in other communities working on similar issues? Are you willing to help other communities interested in monitoring by sharing your experiences about what was successful and what didn't work?

If you have questions or for more information, please contact Sharyle Patton of Commonweal at spatton@igc.org or Kristin Schafer of Pesticide Action Network kristins@panna.org.
This tool was developed by Maria Pellerano (Rachel's Weekly), Kristin Schaffer (Pesticide Action Network), Ted Schettler (Science and Environmental Health Network), Pam Miller (Alaskan Communities Against Toxics), and Sharyle Patton (Commonweal).