A deer study at Aberdeen Proving Ground: Project planning, data assimilation, and risk assessment
- Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD (United States)
For more than 75 years, Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) has been in the business of research, development, and testing of munitions and military vehicles for the US Army. Currently, APG is on the National Priorities List and an installation wide human health risk assessment is underway. Like many Department of the Army facilities, APG has an active hunting program. Hunters harvest approximately 800 whitetail deer (Odocoileus virginanus) from APG annually. To assure public safety, the authors completed a study during the 1993 hunting season to identify any potential human health hazards associated with consumption of venison from APG. This paper will discuss the unique strategy behind the experimental design, the actual assimilation of the data, and the results of the human health risk assessment to establish an appropriate contaminant levels in APG deer. Also, based on information in the literature, the authors considered gender, age, and season in the study design. The list of chemicals for residue analysis included explosives, PCBs, organochlorine pesticides, and metals (As, Cd, Cr, Pb, Hg). Of the 150 deer sampled, metals were the only chemicals detected. The authors compared these data to metal levels in deer collected from an off post background site. Metal levels did not differ significantly between APG deer and off post deer. Finally, the authors completed a health risk assessment of eating deer harvested from both APG and off post. From a survey distributed to the hunters, they incorporated actual consumption data into the exposure assessment. Their findings concluded that the risk of eating APG deer was no higher than eating off post deer; however, total arsenic levels in muscle did appear to elevate the risk.
- OSTI ID:
- 201213
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9511137--; ISBN 1-880611-03-1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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