Tribe digs into health of its food: Swinomish wonder if toxics have permeated diet

LONE TREE POINT, Swinomish Indian Reservation — For thousands of years, as the tide has slipped from this beach, the table has been set with a bounty of sweet clams. Dungeness crabs have beckoned in nearby shallows.

But today some tribal members wonder what else they could be eating in these traditional foods that have sustained them for generations. Oil refineries, a chemical-manufacturing plant and agricultural lands share the air and watershed with the tribe's 3,000 acres of tidelands located on the Swinomish reservation, just outside La Conner in Skagit County.

State and federal surveys in the area indicate chemical contamination in tribal tidelands and water, as well as in some surrounding areas designated as tribal harvest areas. The health of those seabeds is an increasingly important question to tribal members, who eat shellfish at more than 20 times the rate of nontribal Puget Sound-area residents.

This week, the Swinomish (pronounced "SWIN-ih-mish") received the largest research grant ever awarded to a tribe by the Environmental Protection Agency: a four-year, $1.2 million study of exposure of tribal members to toxics as a result of consumption of shellfish.

The goal is to determine if toxics are present in crabs and clams at levels that could harm human health. This tribe, like others, endures elevated levels of chronic health problems, including cancer and diabetes. Some wonder if contamination of sustenance foods such as shellfish could be linked to those troubles.

Some tribal members say they are relieved that the safety of their traditional foods is being assessed.

"It's very important to determine what our people our ingesting. When it has been part of your diet forever, you take it for granted. You go out, you dig the clams, you eat them, without ever considering that there could be something in them that could hurt your body," said Tribal Chairman Brian Cladoosby. "Hopefully we won't find anything major."

Government standards based on consumption rates in the typical American diet don't begin to assess the potential for exposure to contamination for tribal members.

These foods fill more than the belly: The harvesting of crab and shellfish is a treaty right due the tribe in return for thousands of acres of aboriginal lands ceded to the United States government. And these foods lie at the heart of the tribe's culture.

The reservation encompasses approximately 7,344 acres, including nearly 3,000 acres of tidelands that ring it, harvested since time immemorial.

"You can't measure the value," Cladoosby said of the tribe's traditional diet of crab, clams, mussels, oysters, geoduck and "sea eggs," or sea urchin roe. "There isn't a dollar figure you could put on what this means to our people."

At a tribal gathering yesterday to celebrate a new playground and graduation from the tribe's Head Start program, steaming hot Dungeness crabs were passed at tables set up in the gym. No tribal gathering is complete without shellfish.

Tina Cayou, 51, cradling her 3-year-old granddaughter, Briana, estimated her family eats shellfish and fish four times a week. "Geoduck, clams, horse clams, mussels, salmon," she said. "Anytime the fishermen can get them, we want them." A lifelong resident of the reservation, she grew up harvesting clams with her parents at Lone Tree Point and passed the tradition on to the next two generations.

"I am glad they are doing the study," Cayou said. "We have another generation coming behind, and we need to be safe from toxics. We have babies to think about." One of her grandbaby's favorite foods, she said, is Dungeness crab.

The study will also benefit the larger community, Cladoosby said. The tribe's crabs are sold commercially — they are the tribe's most important commercial fishery — and tribal members aren't the only ones who harvest shellfish from reservation beaches.

The source of the concern are bioaccumulative toxics, chemicals released into the environment that do not dissipate but instead collect in the tissues of animals. Such chemical accumulations are found in humans, too.

Swinomish and other tribal environmental specialists also have focused on water-quality protection for years. The neighborhood is one reason: All five oil refineries in the state are next to the Swinomish, Puyallup and Lummi Indian nations.

The Padilla Bay and Fidalgo Bay harvest areas are near industrial sewer outfalls. Other important shellfish beds in Similk, Kiket and Skagit Bays also are near effluent outfalls and contaminated sites.

A former petroleum-waste-disposal site also lies within the reservation boundaries.

Testing will take place in Padilla and Fidalgo bays and near Samish Island. Shellfish will be dug from the beaches and analyzed in two labs for the presence of heavy metals, including arsenic, copper, cadmium, mercury and lead; PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls); dioxins and chlorinated pesticides.

The chemicals are linked to long-term serious health effects such as immune-system suppression, endocrine disruption, and reproductive impairment.

The study will identify the type and concentration of toxics present in locally harvested clams and crabs; determine the health risk, if any, and develop ways to offset those risks. A public-education program also would be developed to inform community members if any health risk is discerned.

About half the grant money will pay for lab analysis. The rest will be spent harvesting the shellfish and recording and analyzing the data. Results and methodology will be shared with other potentially affected Puget Sound-area tribes and agencies.

The tiny tribe, with just 763 members, worked for two years to find funding for the contamination study. The study was good news to member Brian Porter.

"What else are we eating, what's in the clams?" Porter said. "This study will make me feel sure I'm eating something I'm supposed to be."

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com.