Saving Seafood

New England States Fear Increased Mercury Contamination As EPA Considers Weakening Rules

December 18, 2018 — Scientists are speaking out about what they say have been “remarkable improvements” in curbing mercury emissions under Obama-era regulations that are now under threat by the Trump administration.

Mercury is a toxic chemical most commonly associated with coal-burning power plants. Because they are downwind from coal-burning states, Maine and the rest of New England have traditionally had higher-than-average rates of mercury contamination, and scientists say a proposal to weaken emission rules could impede progress.

The coal industry considers the 2011 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, known as MATS, the most expensive air pollution regulation ever implemented and responsible for the closure of dozens of coal plants around the country. Acting Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist, and now the EPA is proposing to weaken MATS by heavily weighing costs to the industry.

The EPA maintains that the Obama administration was indifferent toward that side of the equation. But scientists say the agency is downplaying the health and environmental benefits of the rule across the country.

“The reductions in emissions of mercury in the U.S. since 2006 have decreased about 85 percent,” says Dr. Charlie Driscoll, a professor at Syracuse University who spoke to reporters in a teleconference on Monday.

Most of the emissions Driscoll’s referring to came from coal-fired power plants, and he says much of the reason for their reduction can be attributed to the MATS rules.

“We’ve seen decreases in mercury in air, in atmospheric deposition, in water, in soil and we’ve seen declines in both freshwater fisheries in the U.S. in mercury as well as marine fisheries in the Atlantic Ocean,” he says.

Mercury is a neurotoxin that is especially harmful to children and developing fetuses, which is why the Maine Bureau of Health has a freshwater fish consumption advisory for pregnant women, nursing mothers and kids under 8.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Not All Fish Puts You at Risk of Mercury Poisoning

June 7, 2018 — If you’ve ever eaten sushi, you may be familiar with rumors and rumblings about how eating too much can give you mercury poisoning. Pregnant women are typically advised to steer clear of any spicy tuna roll cravings because.

It has to be dangerous to eat too much of a certain kind of fish, right? Well, sort of. Mercury poisoning, and fear of it, is laced with misconceptions, in part because the metal comes in different forms and thus, has different modes of poisoning someone.

Mercury is a natural metal found in the earth, Judith Zelikoff, a professor in NYU’s School of Medicine’s department of environmental medicine, told The Daily Beast. It’s potentially dangerous to ingest because it inhibits inhibits selenoenzymes, which protect the immune system, causing toxicity. Methylmercury is the most common type of organic mercury that is found in the earth and what is commonly in fish that most commonly leads to mercury poisoning. There’s also inorganic mercury, or elemental mercury, that is found in old-school thermometers.

“The problem comes from environmental exposures,” Zelikoff said, pointing to mercury-containing coal combustion as the problem. “So when [coal] is burned and combusted, it gets into the air. Once it’s in the air it falls to the ground, not only to the soil but also to the surface of water and rivers and lakes.

Read the full story at The Daily Beast

Muddled communications on mercury causing consumer confusion

June 6, 2018 — It’s a rare occasion when representatives of industry, academia, and government all agree.

The fact that the U.S. seafood industry, an army of health experts, and the U.S. government all want to see the country’s population consume more seafood is a sign of how universal the agreement is surrounding the health benefits of seafood consumption.

But in seeking to achieve that objective, consensus often breaks down over the best way to communicate the benefits to consumers. One of the biggest points of division is the issue of mercury contamination in fish, since scientific studies on the potential harm of mercury in seafood are often conflicting and a source of frustration to consumers.

Jay Shimshack, an asssociate professor of public policy and economics at the University of Virginia and an expert in environmental and health policy, told SeafoodSource the problem lies with the way policymakers frame the message when issuing health advisories.

“Fish consumption advice is often complex and confusing. Message-framing matters a lot, and real-world constraints like affordability are as important as the true risks and benefits,” Shimshack said.

Consumers are told eating a variety of fish can be good for them, Shimshack said.

“But [they are told], ‘Do not consume some species [and be] careful not to consume too much of other species,’” Shimshack said. “Current U.S. commercial fish advisories list more than 60 species, and species names are not always consistent from one time and place to the next.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Gloucester Times: We all play a role in limiting mercury pollution

April 27, 2017 — Mercury poses a dangerous threat to people and the environment, and northeastern Massachusetts has been tainted by higher-than-normal levels of the heavy metal. Those of us who live here — let alone catch and eat fish here — depend on efforts to contain the toxic element – including by making sure old thermostats, fluorescent bulbs and similar products don’t wind up in landfills.

But with shared interest comes shared responsibility, and none of us should need a financial reward to do the right thing for ourselves, each other or the environment.

That’s the suggestion of some green groups, however, when they criticize Massachusetts’ law on mercury disposal and an industry-organized effort to collect devices that contain the metal.

They point to incentives required by other New England states that force makers of thermostats and light bulbs to offer rewards to consumers and contractors to recycle old mercury products. In Maine, the rebate is $5.

Those programs come at a cost, either for the state and taxpayers or for manufacturers. And they don’t move the needle of recycling, according to industry representatives. It’s hard to imagine such small rebates swaying enough people to make a difference.

A spokesman for the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, in media reports when Massachusetts updated its mercury law two and a half years ago, derisively called the payments a “bounty.”

Read the full opinion piece at the Gloucester Times

Fish fight: Scientists battle over the true harm of mercury in tuna

March 6, 2017 — Molly Lutcavage thought she had a deal. For more than a decade, she had collected hundreds of tissue samples from bluefin tuna in hopes of settling a question that has long vexed pregnant women and the parents of young children: Should they eat the big fish, a beneficial source of protein and fatty acids? Or did mercury contamination make them too dangerous?

Lutcavage hoped to test the theory that selenium, a key chemical found in tuna, prevents mercury from being transferred to the people who eat them and that, therefore, the fish are safe to eat. So she gave her hard-won samples to a colleague, Nick Fisher, to analyze in his lab.

But Fisher, it seems, didn’t have as much interest in Lutcavage’s selenium theory. Two years later, he produced a study focused almost exclusively on his own hypothesis: that lowering pollution emissions from power plants reduced the levels of mercury in bluefin tuna.

Lutcavage was furious, and the two scientists went to war.

“We kept fighting on this,” said Lutcavage, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. “I feel that the paper didn’t advance the issue whatsoever on this divide between scientists over methylmercury. I can’t tell you how much [my colleagues and I] agonized over taking our names off the paper.”

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Mercury Levels in Gulf of Maine Tuna on the Decline

December 29, 2016 — There’s some good news for sushi lovers. A new report finds that over an 8-year period, mercury levels in Gulf of Maine tuna declined 2 percent a year — a decline that parallels reductions in mercury pollution from Midwest coal-fired power plants.

Two years ago, Dr. Nicholas Fisher, a professor of marine sciences at Stony Brook University in New York, had a bit of luck — he found out that a colleague had established a collection of 1,300 western Atlantic bluefin taken from the Gulf of Maine between 2004 and 2012.

“They were frozen, wasn’t the entire fish, just about a pound from each fish or so. And then my colleagues and I in New York dissected out muscle tissue from each sample and analyzed it to determine the mercury content of each fish,” he says.

And as they created a timeline for mercury content for each year, taking into account the age and size of each fish sampled, a clear picture emerged.

“There was a fairly steady decline for all ages of fish, and the decline rate was approximately 2 percent per year, which doesn’t sound all that dramatic, but over 10 years it’s about 20 percent. Over two decades its about 40 percent,” Fisher says.

Most mercury pollution in this region originates from coal-fired plants in the Midwest, drifting east on the prevailing winds to drop on the coast and coastal waters. In response to regulatory and industry efforts, and to market forces, those emissions happen to have been declining by about 2 percent a year.

Read the full story at Rhode Island Public Radio 

Should you worry about mercury in seafood? What you need to know

December 15, 2016 — Are you feeling conflicted about eating seafood? Do you embrace the idea of getting healthy omega-3 fats in your diet — but worry that they might come with an unhealthy dose of mercury? If so, you’re far from alone — that’s one reason that the average American is not eating the recommended amount of fish and seafood.

The official recommendations for seafood consumption from the American Heart Association and the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans are to eat fish at least twice weekly — at least 8 ounces total — but only one in 10 of us do. The average person eats 3.5 ounces per week, and that drops to an average of 2 ounces during pregnancy — despite the recommendation that pregnant and breast-feeding women increase fish intake to up to 12 ounces per week.

If you’ve been playing it safe by limiting how much fish you eat, the good news is that you can relax. There’s a game-changer in the seafood and mercury debate — selenium. Selenium is an antioxidant mineral that helps prevent free radical damage to your cells, but it’s also an essential part of a few dozen enzymes (selenoenzymes) that protect your brain from damage. This is where seafood comes in.

According to Nicholas Ralston, Ph.D., a research scientist at the University of North Dakota’s Energy and Environment Research Center, part of the confusion about mercury and seafood comes from conflicting results from large studies on the effects of mercury consumption on childhood brain development. Ralston, who studies the health effects of mercury, spoke at the annual meeting of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in Boston in October.

On one hand, two major studies, one from the Faeroe Islands and one from New Zealand, found low levels of harm from mercury exposure from seafood. On the other hand, studies in the United States and other countries found increased seafood consumption was associated with higher child IQ, despite mercury. Ralston said that when researchers dug harder to figure out what was driving the inconsistencies, they found the selenium link.

Mercury and selenium form an essentially unbreakable bond in your body. If you are getting more mercury than selenium, that doesn’t leave any “free” selenium for those brain enzymes. This can be especially devastating during pregnancy and shortly after birth, when a child’s brain is developing rapidly.

In the Faroe Island and New Zealand studies, the most heavily consumed types of seafood were whale and shark, which are high in mercury and very low in selenium. “That’s not what most people eat,” Ralston said. To top it off, both countries were also selenium-poor. “At the time of the study, New Zealand was one of the most selenium-poor nations on Earth. So throw some mercury at them, and they’re going to go down hard and fast.”

The U.S. is not a selenium-poor nation, but even if that weren’t true, the bottom line is that it is much safer to eat fish than to not eat fish. “There’s so much selenium in ocean fish that rather than falling behind in your selenium, you get enriched,” Ralston said. “The more fish you eat, rather than being in more danger of mercury toxicity, you’re safer.”

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

Tuna’s Declining Mercury Contamination Linked to U.S. Shift Away from Coal

November 23, 2016 — Levels of highly toxic mercury contamination in Atlantic bluefin tuna are rapidly declining, according to a new study. That trend does not affect recommended limits on consumption of canned tuna, which comes mainly from other tuna species. Nor does it reflect trends in other ocean basins. But it does represent a major break in the long-standing, scary connection between tuna and mercury, a source of public concern since 1970, when a chemistry professor in New York City found excess levels of mercury in a can of tuna and spurred a nationwide recall. Tuna consumption continues to be the source of about 40 percent of the mercury contamination in the American diet. And mercury exposure from all sources remains an important issue, because it causes cognitive impairment in an estimated 300,000 to 600,000 babies born in this country each year.

The new study, published online on November 10 by Environmental Science & Technology, links the decline directly to reduced mercury emissions in North America. Most of that reduction has occurred because of the marketplace shift by power plants and industry away from coal, the major source of mercury emissions. Pollution control requirements imposed by the federal government have also cut mercury emissions.

Progress on both counts could, however, reverse, with President-elect Donald Trump promising a comeback for the U.S. coal industry, in part by clearing away such regulations.

For the new study, a team of a half-dozen researchers analyzed tissue samples from nearly 1,300 Atlantic bluefin tuna taken by commercial fisheries, mostly in the Gulf of Maine, between 2004 and 2012. They found that levels of mercury concentration dropped by more than 2 percent per year, for a total decline of 19 percent over just nine years.

Read the full story at Scientific American

News media sound the alarm on mercury in seafood during pregnancy — was it a false alarm?

April 28, 2016 — A recent 20-page policy report from the Environmental Working Group included alarming news: According to a study they conducted, “nearly three in 10 of the women had more mercury in their bodies than the EPA says is safe,” and rates were highest among women who ate seafood frequently.

Based on this, they issued a news release with the alarming headline of “U.S. Seafood Advice Could Expose Women And Babies To Too Much Mercury, Not Enough Healthy Fats.”

That sounds like important–and clicky–news, and the media acted accordingly: At least a dozen different news outlets wrote about the study, including high-profile publications like The Washington Post (“Why it’s still so hard to eat fish and avoid mercury”), TIME Magazine (“Canned Tuna Is Too High In Mercury for Pregnant Women: Health Group”), and CNN. (“Study of mercury in fish brings call to strengthen government guidelines”)

Seafood industry fires back hostile response that, well, partially made sense

The seafood industry trade group National Fisheries Institute caught wind of the report and resulting news coverage, and fired back big time, with a news release, “Mercury ‘Study’ Out of Step with Real Science.”  They didn’t stop there, turning their ire specifically at TIME Magazine, asking “Seriously….what is wrong with TIME Magazine?”

While it’s debatable whether this miffed tone helps or hurts the trade organization’s public relations effort, NFI does have a point: The news coverage, in general, could have been stronger.

Before we get into what journalists could have done differently, we do want to stress that EWG’s study conclusions–that mercury contamination in fish is more widespread than government agencies acknowledge–very well may be true. It’s just their report doesn’t prove this, certainly not on its own.

Read the full story at Health News Review

Fish-filled diet causing elevated mercury levels in Asian Americans

October 30, 2015 — Asian Americans eat a lot of fish.

And while that can contribute to better health, it can also lead to elevated mercury levels in the blood. That’s because industrial pollution has contaminated waterways and the fish living in it. This makes some traditional Asian eating patterns risky, especially for women of childbearing age.

Elevated mercury levels in pregnant and nursing women can impair the cognitive development of their children. And high levels in older adults can increase risk of cardiovascular disease.

When researchers studied blood and hair samples of Asian Americans in Seattle and New York they found elevated mercury levels in one-third to nearly half of all subjects, respectively.

Preliminary studies have shown similar issues in Chicago Asians, according to environmental health physician Dr. Susan Buchanan. This week the University of Illinois at Chicago announced that Buchanan and her colleagues have received a $2.6 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health to study the issue further.

Read the full story from WBEZ