On remote Alaskan island, community-based research empowers residents
Through NIEHS support, scientists are engaging tribal communities and helping them reduce contamination in water, soil.
BY KELLEY CHRISTENSEN
NIEHS Enviromental Factor
January 2023
The Native American Heritage Month Annual Guest Lecture Nov. 16 focused on NIEHS-funded environmental health research in Alaska with co-presenters Pamela Miller and Viola “Vi” Waghiyi of the nonprofit group Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT). Waghiyi is a tribal citizen of the Native Village of Savoonga, a Yupik community on Sivuqaq (St. Lawrence Island). Miller and Waghiyi shared the story of community-based research (CBR) underway on Sivuqaq, where for decades U.S. military waste abandoned after the Cold War has contaminated water and soil.
ACAT has been a part of the NIEHS grant portfolio since 2000, but their work breaks the typical National Institutes of Health (NIH) model of an academic institution grant project. ACAT is a statewide environmental health and justice organization that works to address environmental health risks from formerly used defense sites and the global transport of persistent organic pollutants.
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Sivuqaq is perched in the Bering Sea in sight of the Chukotkan Peninsula of Russia, where the Yupik people have for thousands of years plied the ocean and rocky cliffs for sustenance. About 1,900 people live on the island now, and 90% of those people continue to rely on a traditional diet, which includes marine animals and vegetables and birds. However, those food sources have become contaminated by military waste and other toxicants, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, and polychlorinated biphenyls. The northernmost regions of the world act as a hemispheric sink for toxic chemicals, which are transported by ocean and air currents and accumulate in the bodies of fish, wildlife, and people.
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For the entire article, see
https://factor.niehs.nih.gov/2023/1/feature/2-feature-community-based-research
—
Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)
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