'Ignored for too long': study showing effects of mercury on mortality in Grassy Narrows wins award

A study confirming that high levels of mercury in fish consumed by the people of Grassy Narrows First Nation has won a prestigious award.

The paper, titled "Mercury exposure and premature mortality in the Grassy Narrows First Nation community: a retrospective longitudinal study," was published in the Lancet Planetary Health last year.

In August, the paper which was authored by Aline Philibert, Myriam Fillion, and Donna Mergler received the Best Environmental Epidemiology Paper award at the annual International Society for Environmental Epidemiology conference.

Mergler, a professor emerita in the department of biological sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal,said the award validates the conclusionreached in the paper, which was that mercury levels in fish consumed byGrassy Narrows residents is contributing to premature death.

"It shows that epidemiologists internationally recognizethat the way in which we showed this relationship was not only scientifically valid, but deserved an award," she said. "It offers further support, again, of what the people of Grassy Narrows have been saying."

Grassy Narrows residents have been exposed to elevated mercury levels for decades. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Reed Paper mill in Dryden, upstream from Grassy Narrows, dumped 9,000 kilograms of mercury into the English-Wabigoon River, contaminating the fish that are consumed by members of the community.

The study used biomarker data measuring mercury levels in Grassy Narrows residents,which had been collected between 1970 and 1997. That data had been collected by the government, but was obtained by the community in 2019 and shared with the researchers.

The researchers then, essentially,examined mercury concentrations in people who had died before age 60and those who lived longer than that.

The study's findings support an association between long-term mercury exposure from freshwater fish and premature death in Grassy Narrows.

Mergler said the study confirms what the people of Grassy Narrows have been saying about the mercury levelsand theireffects.

"Certainly, I think one of the important steps that should happen is that we,people outside of Grassy Narrows First Nation, should listen to what people are saying," she said. "I feel they've been ignored for too long, and what they have been saying is that their community has been badly affected by the mercury exposure."

"What we did with this study ... is to basically validate what they're saying, using numbers," Mergler said. "I think that we should learn from this is to listen to what communities are saying."

Mergler said work on another study of the health impacts of mercury in Grassy Narrows is ongoing, which involves doing "extensive" health examinations of those Grassy Narrows residents who had biomarkers indicating they were subject to high levels of mercury exposure over time.

Those examinations, Mergler said, "will provide even further information on how this poisoning manifests itself."