Mercury levels in fish bought in and around Washington, DC
Levels of mercury in commercially available fish have become the subject of intense debate among environmental activist groups, often resulting in statements about food safety that stretch the bounds of both good science and truthful advocacy. While scientists and regulators may aim to protect the public's health with advisories and warnings about trace levels of mercury in fish, such measures are often out of proportion to the hypothetical health risk.
The unintended consequences of warning consumers away from fish can include negative public-health outcomes. In November 2005 testimony before a California Superior Court, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Louis Sullivan stated that mercury warning signs in places where fishare sold “scare people away from a healthy food.”
Dr. Sullivan, the Honorary National Chairman of the March of Dimes program to decrease preterm births, discussed the relationship between fish warnings and declining fish consumption—and the connection between decreased consumption of Omega-3 fatty acids (which are plentiful in fish) and a substantial increase in premature births. The infant mortality rate of the United States ranks a disappointing 27th among industrialized countries. And the March of Dimes estimates that 75 percent of infant deathsin the first month of life involve preterm births.
Because of these and other public health risks associated with the public's growing fear of fish, the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) sought to arrive at a realistic conclusion about the levels of mercury in the fish Americans eat, and what (if any) public health consequences these levels might bring.
In February and March 2006, CCF collected 142 samples of fresh and canned fish from 36 retail stores in the Washington , DC metropolitan area. The samples included canned light and albacore tuna, fresh yellowfin (‘ahi) tuna, swordfish, farmed and wild salmon, Chilean sea bass, and rockfish (striped bass).
Frontier GeoSciences Inc., an independent laboratory in Seattle , performed scientific tests to determine the concentration of mercury in the fish samples. Individual mercury levels ranged from 2.85 parts per million (the highest swordfish sample) to less than 0.01 parts per million (the lowest sample of farmed salmon).
Based on the Food and Drug Administration's description of its regulatory “Action Level” for mercury in fish tissue, every fish sampled in this study is safe to eat. The FDA has written that its Action Level (currently set at 1.0 part per million) “was established to limit consumers' methyl mercury exposure to levels 10 times lower than the lowest levels associated with adverse effects.”
Adjusting for this 1,000-percent cushion, 10.0 (ten) parts per million is actually the minimum level that the FDA believes might represent a health concern for the fish-buying public.
The highest mercury level measured in this study was 350 percent lower than 10.0 parts per million, which the FDA indicates is “the lowest level associated with adverse effects” to human health.
These results are similar to those reported by a number of environmental organizations during the past year, none of which identified a single fish whose mercury level represents an actual human health hazard.
