Enviro Group Calls for Grocery Chains to Post Mercury Warnings
None by KCPW
(KCPW News) Eating fish that contain mercury can be especially dangerous for pregnant women, nursing mothers and children, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But few national grocery chains post that warning on their fish counters.Local environmental group Great Salt Lakekeeper is launching a campaign to change that, saying customers need a reminder when deciding which fish to buy.
The EPA advises women and children to avoid eating shark, swordfish and mackerel because of high mercury levels, and to limit consumption of albacore tuna to six ounces a week. Mercury is known to harm the developing nervous system of babies and young children.
Email to a friendPosted in KCPW Newsroom. Copyright 2008 KCPW
1. Raymond Takashi Swenson said:
Isn't it a little strange that there is no advisory from the Food and Drug Adminstration on this issue? Could it be because the levels of mercury in these foods does not violate the standards for human consumption? Those standards themselves contain a factor of 1,000 as a safety margin, that is, they are 1,000 times lower than scientific data actually supports as being a risk. There is no clinical data showing that people in the United States eating regular canned or frozen fish have ever experienced any symptoms of mercury toxicity. The acute symptoms some people in Japan experienced 35 years ago were caused by acute exposure to massive doses of mercury that went straight from an industrial plant into their food and water supply. The fact is there are extremely low levels of all sorts of chemicals in all that we eat, and many of them are perfectly natural, produced by the plants themselves, some as natural pesticides, others as byproducts of organic processes (hydrazine in mushrooms), and others from the action of other lifeforms (such as fungus creating aflatoxin on corn and peanuts). It is impossible to avoid them, and in fact they are part and parcel of eating a balanced diet. There is no actual evidence that getting these miniscule amounts in our food in any way jeopardizes our health. Once you eliminate concentrated sources of pollutants in your food and drink (e.g. alcohol, tobacco), there is nothing in a balanced diet in sufficient concentration to actually create a significant probability of ill health.
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