The Issue
Mercury
Mercury exposure from eating fish carries serious health risks, especially for developing fetuses. Read about EWG’s mercury research and learn how to avoid the dangers by using EWG’s Tuna Calculator.
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The Latest on Mercury
How much tuna can you eat safely?
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December 22, 2003
Read MoreEWG demonstrates that women complying with FDA's dietary guidelines for fish consumption during pregnancy will ingest unsafe amounts of mercury when they select fish with elevated mercury levels, like albacore tuna.
Read MoreEWG will use a newly enacted law (the Data Quality Act (DQA) of 2001) to mount a novel legal challenge to the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) highly controversial pending "advice" to consumers about how much tuna and other fish they can safel
Read MoreEWG's analysis of mercury data obtained from FDA under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that mercury contamination of fish is more serious than federal scientists previously assumed.
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Results of new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fish tests show that mercury contamination of canned tuna and other fish is more serious than agency scientists previously assumed.
Read MoreA joint UN - WHO expert food committee has just recommended a new international standard for mercury in seafood that continues to allow a dangerous mercury exposure level, and is particularly threatening to infant children whose developing brains may be exposed to twice the amount of mercury that the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. EPA consider safe.
Read MoreIn an effort to divert building efforts to warn American women about the dangers of mercury-contaminated tuna fish, seafood industry lobbyists are hyping a study originally funded by the mercury-polluting utility industry showing that children in a remote Indian Ocean island nation were not harmed by mercury pollution in the seafood their mothers ate when pregnant.
Read MoreToday EWG filed a legal challenge seeking to block the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from issuing a weak proposed health advisory for mercury in seafood. New analyses contained within the filing show that FDA's advice fails to meet the standards for accuracy and scientific integrity of the Data Quality Act, a law passed in 2000.
Read MoreMercury is toxic to the developing fetal brain and is a poison of growing concern to health authorities nationwide. When the U.S.
Read MoreLike lead, mercury is toxic to the developing brain. It blocks the natural formation and migration of nerve cells and alters brain growth and development. The fetus is most vulnerable to mercury and the principal source of exposure is fish consumption by the mother. EPA estimates that between 60 and 75 percent of mercury in U.S. waters is from man made pollution, and that coal fired power plants are the largest and only unregulated source.
Read MoreGovernment recommendations for fish consumption could expose more than one in four expectant mothers - 1 million women - to enough mercury to put the health of their fetuses at risk, according to a new computer investigation released today by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG).
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View and Download the report here: Brain Food
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Scientists and government officials, including a blue ribbon panel of the National Academy of Sciences, are growing increasingly concerned about the health threat that mercury contamination of commonly eaten fish may pose to the delicate, rapidly developing nervous systems of fetuses, infants and young children.
Read MoreView and Download our report here: Up In Smoke
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View and Download the report here: Greening Hospitals
Read MoreFish from more than 1,660 U.S. waterways are so contaminated with mercury that they should not be eaten or eaten only in limited amounts, according to federal health warnings analyzed by the Environmental Working Group (EWG).
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