Routine monitoring of toxics in fish-year 4 - Atlantic Coastal Inland Region
Creators: name: Ruppel, Bruce
name: Buchanan, Gary
name: Horwitz, Richard J.
name: Overbeck, Paul F.
name: Ashley, Jeff
name: Velinsky, David
Publisher: name: Not given
Year: 2010

description: The Routine Monitoring for Toxics in Fish Program is a 5-year, geographically based rotating program to generatedata on chemical contaminants in fish for the issuance, update and revision of fish consumption advisories. Themonitoring program design is built upon fish contaminant research conducted by NJDEP since the early 1980’s.In order to investigate regional patterns in fish contamination the program includes rotating sample collections among geographic regions within the state. In addition to analyze fish contaminant temporal trends and to identify unknown hotspots, re-sampling selected waterbodies and sampling “new” (not previously sampled)locations was part of the sampling regime. This Year 4 study provides the results for the Atlantic Coastal InlandRegion. The study design incorporated a variety of considerations, including sampling species that are important to recreational fishing, targeting fish species of specific trophic position that are known to bioaccumulate mercury and/or organic chemical contaminants, consider the target species body lipid content (important in organiccontaminants), as well as species longevity and/or lifestyle proximity to bottom sediments. The data generated through this study are useful in developing credible consumption risk assessments, since they include the size ranges and species that are generally targeted by recreational anglers and can be used in an evaluation of contaminant trends in this region and comparable throughout the state. The results show that mercury in fish concentrations varied among species, but typically increased with fish size and are usually higher in predatory fish, such as chain pickerel and largemouth bass. Mercury levels in chain pickerel were highest in waters with pH less than 7, and for largemouth bass in lakes with pH between 5 and 6. The highest mercury concentrations were observed at drainage sites within and marginal to the Pine Barrens. As observed in this and previous studies lower pH waterbodies typically reflect conditions promoting high mercury bioavailability through methylation, and sources of mercury in the environment are both natural and anthropogenic. PCB levels in the fishsampled, however, showed a different contamination pattern with only relatively low to moderate PCB concentrations identified from these same locations. In general, PCBs and OCPs were typically higher in samples of American eel than other fish species examined. DDXs showed high variability within all sites of the study area, with some of the lowest and highest average concentrations observed when compared to previously studied regions. The variations in these xenobiotics (PCBs, OCPs, DDX) may highlight the differing contaminant sources and geo-chemistry of these contaminants, and may also reflect legacy industrial practices of production, disposal and/or use. Although these xenobiotic concentrations were variable among sites, the highest average concentrations were seen in fish from Deal Lake (PCBs and chlordanes), North Branch Metedeconk River (DDXs and chlordanes), Maurice River (PCBs), and several other smaller lakes (DDXs). Although there are large differencesin contaminant concentrations in samples within regions, a comparison of fish tissue chemical dataamong sites from the previous studies on the Passaic and Raritan Regions, and this study show some regionalcontaminant differences. In general concentrations of mercury were higher in the Atlantic Coastal Region whilePCBs were higher in the Raritan Region. Where comparisons between 1992 and 2007datasets for this study were possible, there was no clear trend in contaminant concentrations at previously sampled locations. When comparing these data to available health criteria, with the exception of mercury, few of the samples analyzed exceeded the USFDA action levels for advisories on commercial fish. However, the NJDEP/DHSS use USEPA supported risk-based health criteria, in establishing consumption advisories for recreationally caught fish. These criteria are typically lower than FDA thresholds for mercury, PCBs, dioxins, and OCPs. The majority of the fish samples tested in this study exceeded the various individual NJDEP/DHSS/USEPA contaminant risk-based thresholds and several samples examined exceeded thresholds for multiple contaminants. The data from this study were used by NJDEP/DHSS to develop the most recent fish consumption advisories for a variety ofrecreationally caught fish in New Jersey.