Mercury in Fish Interstate Network (FIN)

The Tulane University Center of Excellence for Public Health Tracking, along with several of its EPHT partners, has begun an effort to determine the feasibility of establishing a Mercury in Fish Interstate Network (Mercury FIN).  The goal of the network is to demonstrate and implement EPHT principles and methods.  Specifically, the network would serve as a means to demonstrate the steps, processes and methods for implementing a tracking network.  Additionally, the network will serve as means to test and evaluate products from EPHT workgroups, particularly the Standards and Network Development workgroup. 

The initial phase of the project identified information about existing data that is available to support a multi-state network. Publicly available federal and state fish tissue databases were reviewed along with any guidance on standardization of these databases.  This provided a baseline to create a survey on fish tissue data and other mercury data sources that was distributed to state partners.

The Mercury FIN Data Survey consisted of 12 questions which asked about data fields collected; availability of metadata and data dictionaries; additional sources of mercury data; and collection of data relating to fishing licenses and fish consumption surveys.  The responses to this survey provided information regarding the availability of this data, the condition of the data, and the availability of metadata. 

State partners were asked to evaluate the administrative application of the Trading Partner Agreement (TPA) for data exchange and transfer.  The TPA was developed by the EPHT Standards and Network Development workgroup, Data Sharing and Access subgroup.  Additionally, state partners were asked to evaluate the Metadata “Test Kit”, developed by the EPHT Standards and Network Development workgroup, Metadata and Data Quality subgroup, which includes tools for creating metadata. 

Mercury FIN had two outputs: 1) it tested the implementation of products and processes developed by the EPHT Standards and Network Development workgroup and its subgroups, including Trading Partner Agreements and Metadata recommendations; and 2) it assessed the availability and condition of fish tissue data, and the feasibility of using it in the EPHT framework.  The need for Trading Partners Agreements (TPA) is case-specific and internal legal issues can impede completion of a TPA. Furthermore, TPAs may not be necessary for publicly available data.   Metadata are not widely generated for environmental data.  Priority and resources are the main reasons for the lack of metadata associated with fish tissue sampling data. The survey results showed the lack of standardization in state data collection procedures across the state partners. 

This project illustrated data issues that present barriers to a nationwide tracking network.  For EPHT to use existing data in a tracking system, simple tools and incentives may be needed to encourage data custodians to generate metadata for inclusion in EPHT.  There is also a need for standardization in data fields collected in order the data to be integrated across state programs.