Sociocultural factors associated with fish consumption in Lake Albert fishing community: Guidelines for lead and mercury

Abstract

Fish consumption in subsistence fishing community is a life style associated with lead and mercury uptake for humans. Fish consumption is influenced by sociocultural factors, exposure and health risks. Unfortunately, no sociocultural study in the Lake Albert fishing community in light of lead and mercury exists. A cross-sectional sociocultural study was carried out between March and June 2015. A total of 270 household heads in four landing sites in Hoima district completed structured questionnaires and data analyzed using SPSS version 20. The majority of the households (74.8%) had primary education or below, 51.1% drank unboiled water, and 30% perceived lake water safe for drinking. Children under five ate soup (15%) and middle piece of the fish (29%). The Poisson general linear model predicting weekly fish consumption amounts against sociocultural factors showed that household size ( p = 0.047), male child presence ( p = 0.007), methods of preparation i.e. salting ( p < 0.0001), fish parts consumed by adults ( p < 0.0001), fish preference ( p < 0.0001), awareness about the beach management unit ( p < 0.0001), and income from charcoal selling ( p < 0.0001) were positive predictors. The negative predictors of weekly fish consumption amounts were awareness about fish consumption benefits ( p < 0.0001), eating young fish ( p = 0.002), donor agency presence ( p < 0.0001), and frying as the method of fish preparation ( p = 0.002). In conclusion, knowledge of the sociocultural factors associated with fish consumption determines the amounts and frequency of the predominant fish eaten. Therefore, to establish and adopt fish consumption guidelines for lead and mercury in the Lake Albert, the sociocultural factors should be integrated in the message disseminated.

Vegetables contamination by heavy metals and associated health risk to the population in Koka area of central Ethiopia

“…The quest for industrialization and the concern on food safety are ever increasing in both developed and developing nations all over the world. The concern about environmental pollution and food safety is growing due to the probable health danger to the population [1][2][3]. Among environmental contaminants, heavy metals due to the anthropogenic and other activities have attracted numerous attentions due to their serious health implication to humans when accrued in an preeminent concentration above body requirements [4,5].…”

“…As evidenced by literature, vegetables demand and consumption is remarkably growing in every parts of the globe as it institutes a vital part of the human diet and nutrition [6,7]. However, it has been documented that most of the vegetables commercially available, especially in developing nations, are often grown in urban and suburb areas of big cities [3,[8][9][10]. As a result, these vegetable are exposed to anthropogenic pollution instigated from sources including but not limited to urban and industrial wastes, mining and smelting and metallurgical industries [11,12].…”

“…The pollution of soil with toxic heavy metals have been regarded as a foremost source of crops and vegetables contamination and a major route of human exposure to these toxic metals [16]. As a result, heavy metals have been recognized as substantial pollutants of vegetables cultivated around urban and suburb areas worldwide [3,4,11,[17][18][19][20][21]. This is a clear suggestion that vegetables being cultivated around urban and suburban areas are suggestively exposed to heavy metals contamination.…”

The Influence of Parents and Other Factors on Adolescents’ Fish Consumption in Selected Senior High School Students, Jakarta

“…Lai et al (16) demonstrate that fish consumption in adolescents has a significant relationship with parental influence at home. Tamale et al also show that the availability of fish at home is significantly associated with fish consumption in children (17) .…”

Drivers of marine fishery dependence: Micro-level evidence from the coastal lowlands of Kenya

“…A growing body of empirical literature suggests that natural resource dependence is associated with socio-economic characteristics, distance to the extracting ground, and asset value (Amevenku et al, 2019;Nguyen et al, 2015Nguyen et al, , 2018Tamale et al, 2017). In addition, market access, financial capital, access to health, and membership to formal or informal institutions are likely to affect the dependence on these resources (Béné & Friend, 2011;Soltani et al, 2012).…”