A century of industrial use has contaminated Seattle's Duwamish Waterway, making much of its fish unsafe to eat.
Photo by David_Johnson, courtesy iStockphoto
Edwin Caceres knows there are plenty of fish to catch in Seattle's Duwamish River. He also knows it is so polluted that only salmon are safe to eat.
Now, thanks to the Public Health-Seattle & King County health department, Caceres, 18, shares that knowledge with local youth fishers as part of an ongoing campaign that is also a reminder: Fun to Catch, Toxic to Eat.
“It's helpful to the community and it's something I enjoy doing,” Caceres told The Nation's Health. “It gets you out. You talk to new people.”
Launched in 2017, the campaign trains community health advocates to reach out to the diverse population of people that fish in the area. The main focus is educating them about the dangers of the Lower Duwamish Waterway, a five-mile segment of the Duwamish River that flows through Seattle's industrial core.
Following a century of industrial pollution, more than 40 hazardous substances have been detected in waterway sediments, including polychlorinated biphenyls, arsenic, carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, dioxins and furans.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designated the Lower Duwamish Waterway a Superfund site in 2001. On March 4, EPA, the U.S. Justice Department and Washington state announced a 10-year, $668 million agreement to clean up the waterway.
Community health advocates spread the message that while salmon that migrate through the waters are safe to eat, bottom-dwelling fish such as perch and sole that live there permanently are contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals.
“We'll visit locations along the river, we'll talk about why it's important to only consume salmon, the health risks of consuming residential fish, then we'll visit an alternative location,” Emma Maceda-Maria, a lead community health advocate, told The Nation's Health.
The community health advocate model began in 2014 under a community-based group called Just Health Action and its partnerships with groups such as the Duwamish River Community Coalition. Advocates are trained to educate residents about their health risks, develop outreach tailored to residents' needs and champion their concerns outside of their communities. Residents worked with advocates to identify issues such as fishing hazard signs that were not in their native languages, such as Spanish or Vietnamese.
Supporters also formed community health advocate teams that worked with local fishers on improving signage, creating easy-to-follow fishing maps and finding the best ways to disseminate health promotion information in their communities.
“Literally before this program, the only thing that was put up around Superfund sites were signs,” Linn Gould, MPH, MS, Just Health Action executive director, told The Nation's Health. “There was extremely little education done and it was all in English.”
In 2017, EPA granted Public Health-Seattle & King County the funds to continue the community work spearheaded under the Fun to Catch, Toxic to Eat name. Since then, the health department has been a resource for advocates to build their capacity, educate fishers and work with them on how to spread health messages to their friends and families in a respectful way.
Today, there are four community health advocate teams, serving Hispanic, Vietnamese, Cambodian and multiethnic Lao and Laotian communities. The program is also starting community partnerships with Eastern European and Black fishing communities as well as the faith-based communities.
Community health advocates also facilitate workshops and cooking demonstrations for mothers and pregnant women that educate them about risks of developmental delays in children from contaminated fish. Workshops for fishers also end with a competition to catch the first salmon and largest salmon.
Members of a community health advocate team share information with Seatac, Washington, residents in 2024.
Photo courtesy Public Health-Seattle & King County
Meeting residents where they are maximizes the impact of their message, whether it is over coffee, at a backyard barbecue or in someone's living room, Maceda-Maria said.
“Being able to have those strategies of making them culturally appropriate has been a way so that the community can make educated changes in their own home to protect their health, to protect their loved ones, their children who are the most affected,” she said.
Maceda-Maria, who leads the advocate group for the Hispanic community, known as Grupo Asesor Latino, said she has seen fishers and spouses of fishers train to become advocates themselves. In 2025, the program reached about 3,000 people, including fishers, caregivers and people who consume locally caught fish.
The program's success stems from advocates being able to build relationships over time, said Ruben Chi Bertoni, the Fun to Catch, Toxic to Eat program coordinator at Public Health-Seattle & King County.
“It takes a lot of time to do behavior change,” Bertoni told The Nation's Health.
“Encountering people multiple times and having them build that rapport and trust is something that is really hard to quantify. But (it is) essential to be able to reach folks and have them trust our message.”
Last year marked the first full year of the Duwamish Youth Advisors, which tasks Caceres with going to community events, middle schools and piers frequented by youth to teach them about safer fishing. Caceres said his parents' involvement with Grupo Asesor Latino inspired him to get involved. In his outreach, he still encounters people unaware of the contamination.
Community health advocates with the Fun to Catch, Toxic to Eat program demonstrate salmon fishing techniques for Duwamish Fishing Club participants in Seattle in 2022. The program educates about safe fish consumption.
Photo courtesy Public Health-Seattle & King County
“Either they never heard about it or they are people that have recently moved here, and when it comes to those people I feel like they're way more interested than anybody else,” Caceres said. “They ask questions, which is really, really good.”
For more information, visit www.kingcounty.gov/duwamish-fishing.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
