Creating a Needs Assessment for Monitoring Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) in Hawaiʻi
What are CECs? As opposed to legacy, or established contaminants, CECs are generally contaminants that are not well understood and are often unregulated. While they may be detected in the environment, they are not included in monitoring mandates, and there may be little to no research into their toxicity, behavior, and how they impact organisms and the environment. Even that definition is variable between regulators, management professionals, researchers, and chemists. This creates a grey zone for monitoring and legal urgency for investigating CECs. This project prioritized synthetic, man-made, chemical contaminants present in current commerce with some sort of regulatory pathway already established, including pharmaceuticals, personal hair products, pesticides, PFAS, and microplastics.
Though there is a strong case for monitoring CECs, analyzing environmental samples is extremely expensive. Depending on the test’s sensitivity to specific compounds, individual sample analyses can run hundreds to thousands of dollars, creating a powerful initial barrier to pilot monitoring projects becoming established. There is the additional question of which health risk should be the highest priority since these tests cannot cover a suite of 100 different contaminants at a time.
How is a needs assessment created? A needs assessment in this context is a systematic process for identifying gaps between the current state of CEC monitoring and the desired outcomes for the state of Hawaiʻi. It helps to prioritize improvements, offer recommendations, and allocate resources effectively. Lauryn Hansen led this work as a Grau Fellow (E. Gordon Grau Coastal and Marine Resource Management and Policy Fellowship). She took a very interpersonal approach, contacting over 100 people from state agencies, regional monitoring programs, and academic departments investigating contaminants across Hawaiʻi, California, Washington, and Colorado. As the network of contacts grew, the picture became clearer for how different places have approached funding and creating regulatory support for CEC-monitoring projects.
The most notable limitation for Hawaiʻi’s CEC monitoring needs was simply capacity. CEC monitoring mandates typically operate at a federal level, a broad scope that does not account for localized needs. This Hawaiʻi CEC Monitoring Needs Assessment offers recommendations of frameworks, management priorities, and potential research projects for the state to investigate and manage CECs in Hawaiʻi.
Why is this helpful? The primary exposure concern for CECs is ingestion via contaminated drinking water, which has federally mandated monitoring. However, inhalation, dermal contact, and occupational exposure are also dangerous to human health. The last of these impacts people working in industries constantly exposed to contaminants, like military, firefighting, and construction workforces. Creating a monitoring program specific to Hawaiʻi beyond federal mandates can further protect our communities. While this needs assessment’s recommendations are statewide, there are considerations for the variance in community needs from island to island.
As Lauryn stated, “there’s a huge gap between the scale of understanding and the scale of impact [of CECs]. We’re all getting exposed to those chemicals all the time, and so few people know what’s happening.” We want to change that.
