Posted on 08/01/2005 6:15:46 AM PDT by topher
[10 year old boy who eats 3 to 6 ounces of tuna a day has neurological and brain effects. Blood tests show that his mercury level was 12 times what the EPA considered safe for a 60 pound boy. Article states that solid white albacore tuna has more mercury than chunk light tuna... U.S. source of Mercury in water is coal fired power plants... Vanity introduction since this is an excerpt]
...
Ms. Davis noticed something else: Her son's fingers were starting to curl, as if he were gripping a melon. And he could no longer catch a football.
A neurologist ordered tests. They showed Mathhew's blood level was laced with mercury in the amounts nearly double what the Environment Protoection Agency says is the safe level of exposure to the metal. Matthew had mercury poisoning, his doctors said.
The Davises had pinpointed the suspected source: tuna fish. For a year or so, starting late 2002, Matthew had gobbled three to six ounces a day of white albacore tuna. ... based on FDA data for canned albacore, he was consuming a daily does mercury at least 12 times what the EPA considered a safe level for a 60-pound child. ...
[Vanity: the article states that one microgram a day for each 22 pounds of body weight. It appears that the tuna industry may have squashed news about this even under the Clinton Administration. Apparently, there is some controversy on the Federal level about what safe levels are, and how much tuna should be consumed.
A joint Federal Safety Advisory board allows much more tuna to be consumed than is safe.]
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
The article states that women who are pregnant will have the mercury concentrate more in the unborn baby's body than in the mother's.
I am not sure why coal fired power plants are the cause in the United States -- seems like scrubbers in the chimney should help remove this, but maybe mercury is too light an element to be easily scrubbed.
ping - might be good to pass along. Too much tuna is actually bad for you...
I am concerned about women who diet excessively and use foods like tuna-fish to help keep their weight down...
The mercury in Great Lakes salmon and trout can be traced directly to Chinese coal. Coals from every part of the world have a locale signature in their ash and thus can be traced to their source.
Ping the B.S. filters on maximum bandwidth! How many kids eat tuna fish that much? My guess is very few who like it. This smells fishy to me.
I am not sure that the other 60% is from, but I know some major cities dump raw sewage about 1 mile offshore in deep water (Los Angeles was the one I had heard this about). I am not sure if this is still being done.
Darn, and the solid white albacore is all I like. Doesn't have that nasty fishy taste the other does. Well, good thing I don't eat it too often.
susie
In the article, the boy did this rather than eating junk food. Sounds like junk food would have been healthier.
Maybe the key point of the article is that anything should be taken in moderation -- too much of anything can be bad.
I have known women who want to stay thin that eat a can of tuna a day -- especially when trying to bulk up (distance runners, etc).
I'd kill Flipper for a tuna fish sandwich.
"Mercury and Tuna"
Apparently, they've named the new planet beyond Pluto.
I knew a man who ate tuna fish 3 times a day, as well as a sort of porridge. It was some diet regimen he had developed himself. And - every year I saw him - the mental deterioration was noticable.
Of course it might have been from some dietary deficiency rather than mercury poisoning, so I'm still agnostic about Hb's role. But singularity diets are - in general - always dangerous IMO.
I've been aware of the tuna/mercury connection for some time.
Mercury first came to my attention, when I worked in a dental office years ago. When they started making us wear badges to monitor mercury levels in the office, I knew that mercury in the dental office must pose more of a threat that anyone was really stating.
Then the advisement for pregnant women against eating fish, and the mercury connection to certain species.
Now you'll have a hard time finding a dentist who is willing to place an amalgam filling (not sure because of the risk to the dentist's and staff's health from mercury vapor, or risk to the patient.)
But my point is, we went for many years unaware of mercury risks, which makes one wonder if the risk has gotten greater, or if they are just becoming more aware of it now.
susie
Once a week should be fine.
Swordfish has the highest concentration of Mercury [using maximum concentration found, not average].
Swordfish had 0.97 parts per million versus Salmon which had 0.01 parts per million. Albacore tuna had 0.35 parts per million, and chunk light tuna had 0.12 parts per million. Catfish and Shrimp were only a little higher than Salmon -- coming in at 0.05 parts per million.
It is more the case of bigger fish eating smaller fish that helps to concentrate the mercury.
And I guess it is environmentally unsafe to mine low mercury coal here in the US. Maybe that is the Environmental Wacko connection here -- we could probably produce safer coal here if we geared up the coal industry instead of importing coal since it cannot be mined here in this country anymore.
Mercury in tuna and other fish has been written about for decades.
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