Reducing Tribal exposures to Superfund chemicals along the U.S.-Mexico border: Combining novel multidisciplinary collaborative approaches

Exposure to environmental toxicants contributes to human disease and disorders. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, Tribal communities are among the most vulnerable to environmental hazards and exposure to toxicants (including many Superfund chemicals). This vulnerability arises, in part, due to unique exposures associated with diet and Tribal lifestyles (e.g., handling plants for basket weaving and other traditional-ceremonial practices, dependence on groundwater, etc.) as well as gaps in the necessary infrastructure to address the impacts of dumping and other polluting activities that disproportionately impact tribal communities. Since 2005, the NIEHS SBRP at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD SBRP) has worked collaboratively with Tribal governments, Tribal EPAs, researchers, and community organizations to systematically assess environmental health needs and priorities dealing with hazardous substances on tribal land, understand how tribal traditional knowledge can inform and improve risk assessment, and build the capacity of tribes to utilize biomolecular technologies to reduce environmental exposures to hazardous substances. We have found that many significant and widespread environmental health gaps concerning exposure to hazardous substances still remain in spite of gains in both institutional capacity and available resources for some tribes. In this policy paper we show how systematic efforts driven by tribes and tribal priorities utilize a combination of novel multidisciplinary collaborative approaches and state-of-the-art biomolecular technologies to help bridge these gaps and improve environmental and public health.