Closing Data Gaps in Monitoring of Toxics in Partnership with Refugee and Immigrant Community Fishers

King County’s Toxicology and Contaminant Assessment (TCA) unit has run a long-term fish tissue contaminant monitoring program since 2013. Up to this point, our monitoring program has had limited knowledge about the specific priorities of fishers who are Black, Indigenous, or people of color, including those from immigrant and refugee communities. This report describes a cooperative research project conducted by TCA and the Refugee Federation Service Center (RFSC) of King County to learn more about the fishing habits and potential contaminant exposure of traditionally underserved communities in south King County. Included is information from a fisher survey conducted as part of this study as well as results from a fish sampling pilot project conducted with the help of RFSC fishers. The report includes the chemicals detected in fish sampled and how they compare to human health screening levels, and how TCA communicated these findings back to fishers in the immigrant and refugee communities served by the RFSC. As a result of the information we gathered from the pilot fishing project, we produced a flyer called “Healthy Fish-Eating Recommendations from King County” that educates fishers about key contaminants in fish and guides them towards fishing choices that will reduce their overall exposure to contaminants in King County. The flyer was translated into nine languages and distributed to RFSC and their associated communities. Based on the information from this study TCA plans to revise the locations and target fish in our long-term tissue monitoring program to make it more equitable and provide contaminant information useful to more fishing communities in King County.

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This project also led to the creation of the Healthy Fish-Eating Recommendations from King County flyer

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Closing Data Gaps in Monitoring of Toxics in Partnership with Refugee and Immigrant Community Fishers

View the report