Current status of sport fish consumption advisories for PCBs in the Great Lakes

During the past two decades, there have been a number of efforts to harmonize the advice given by different jurisdictions to consumers of sport-caught fish from the Great Lakes. Five years ago, an eight-state task force arrived at consensus recommendations with respect to fish consumption advisories for PCB-contaminated fish from these bodies of water. This report will examine the impacts of these efforts on advisories in these eight states and also how these state advisories compare to that of the Province of Ontario which shares some of these Great Lakes. Careful analyses of the differences among jurisdictions in recommendations and in the bases for these recommendations will illustrate the difficulties in achieving complete consensus. It will be shown that there are a large number of choices that must be made in developing an advisory and that these choices depend largely on policy considerations rather than science. Examples of these policy choices include whether to adjust measured fish concentrations for PCB losses due to preparation and cooking and whether to adjust PCB concentrations to account for nonfish sources of PCBs. Considering the variations among jurisdictions with respect to managing the risks from contaminants in various environmental media, it appears unlikely that uniformity can be achieved unless a regional rather than a state by state approach is taken. Whether a regional or a state by state approach is taken, the information in this report can be used to structure the fish consumption advisory decision-making process.