PCB-Tainted Carp from Utah Lake Could Be Sold as Food

Apr 28, 2008 by Elizabeth Ziegler

(KCPW News) What should be done with 5 million tons of PCB-contaminated fish? That's the quandary facing the Department of Natural Resources. Reed Harris, the recovery program manager for the state's threatened June sucker native fish population, says carp harvested from Utah Lake could be turned into fertilizer, sold for human consumption and a Minnesota man under investigation for fraud wants to send the fish to Iraq.

"You know our major interest is cleaning up Utah Lake, finding a reasonable way of disposing these fish, in a way that is compatible not only with the environment, but in a way that is compatible with human health," Harris says. "And hopefully we'll do that."

Three state agencies and the Utah County Health Department have issued a warning about eating both carp and catfish from Utah Lake because the level of PCBs detected in the fish exceed Environmental Protection Agency standards. Studies indicate PCBs can cause skin rashes, liver problems and cancer. The public is warned to eat only 4 ounces of the contaminated fish each month. And children, pregnant women and women of childbearing age are warned to abstain from eating it altogether. Harris says the fish is considered fit to sell for human consumption under federal Food and Drug Administration guidelines, and in fact, he says it is already sold commercially as food. The fact that the PCB-contaminated fish could wind up on dinner tables is outrageous, says clean water advocate Jeff Salt, the Great Salt Lakekeeper.

"The PCBs need to be decontaminated from the fish product before it is sold as any kind of product. That would be the ethical thing to do," Salt says. "We should feel confident that the pollution we caused in Utah Lake should be cleaned up before the fish are sold to unsuspecting people. And we don't pass the PCBs along in the food chain and add to other people's health and environmental risk factors."

The state will pay commercial fishermen $500,000 this year to harvest invasive carp from Utah Lake. It plans to cull 5 million tons of the fish each year for six years. This, they hope, will reduce the carp population by 75 percent, and change the lake's environment to favor the native June sucker population.

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