News Coverage
Mercury Sounds Seafood Alarm at FDA
Published March 23, 2004
Seafood is a low-fat, high-protein food and one of the best choices Americans can make to fight the problem the country currently faces with widespread obesity. Unfortunately, a new warning from the government serves as a reminder that consuming seafood in this country has become risky behavior. This past December, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency released a draft of their first joint fish consumption advisory. It warns of the dangers that high concentrations of mercury in some fish pose to certain parts of the population, most notably pregnant women.
As the FDA was telling the country to follow specific guidelines when consuming seafood to avoid adverse health problems from mercury pollution, the EPA, almost simultaneously, began speaking publicly about its intention to remove mercury from the list of hazardous air pollutants. This decision will keep utilities from being forced to drastically reduce mercury emissions in the coming years.
In the new warning, the FDA included tuna in a list of fish with particularly high mercury content, a move the tuna industry has been fighting to stop for years. But this concession was quickly forgotten when news of the EPA's decision to reverse their course on the strict regulation of mercury emissions began appearing.
In the past, consumption advisories have been purposely kept ambiguous. The official reason for this is that the government does not want to scare people away from eating seafood because of the many health benefits associated with it. Advocacy groups like Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, believe these vague warnings are the result of pressure from the seafood industry.
The past nationwide warnings have been limited to four species: shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish. Although the new warning includes tuna, by far the most popular seafood in the U.S., environmental groups are still angered by the vague language used to warn people about mercury.
EWG has filed a legal challenge to block the FDA from releasing what it feels is an inadequate health advisory for mercury in seafood.
"(The) FDA does not offer explicit advice regarding canned tuna or any number of other fish with elevated mercury levels," said Elizabeth Moore, the EWG press secretary. "Millions of women are putting their babies at risk of brain damage. EWG is urging FDA to create a clear list of low-mercury fish that women should eat during pregnancy, instead of just telling women to eat a variety of fish."
Young children are at greater risk than adults as the risk of damage decreases with age. But in a 2000 mercury fact sheet, the EPA cites adult exposures to high doses of methylmercury leading to tremors, inability to walk, convulsions and death. The effects of low-dose exposures more commonly seen in the United States include subtler, yet still serious, damage to the senses and brain.
In late Feb. 2003 the EPA released the report, "Children's Health and the Environment." According to the Wall Street Journal, the Bush Administration held up the report for nine months because it highlighted the link between coal-fired power plants and other industrial sources and the mercury levels found in women that can cause birth defects.
The report stated that about 8% of women of childbearing age in the U.S. have blood mercury levels high enough to put their child at an increased risk of adverse health effects, most commonly neurodevelopmental disorders, due to the consumption of contaminated fish. But less than a year later the EPA released a new analysis stating that they now believe that twice the original number of babies are at risk of birth defects. This means that 16% of women of childbearing age have dangerously high blood mercury levels and each year 630,000 children are born at risk to developmental problems.
Based on EPA's National Toxic Inventory, the largest sources of mercury from human activity are coal-fired power plants. Mercury is contained within coal and is released into the air when the coal is burned. An explanation given with the new FDA warning describes how mercury falls from the air and accumulates in streams and oceans. Once in water, mercury reacts with bacteria and takes the form of methylmercury. Small fish eat these bacteria or algae that have absorbed the methylmercury, accumulate in animals as it travels up the food chain.
In general, the longer a fish lives and the more fish it has eaten the more mercury it will contain. The mercury levels also vary depending on how much mercury is present in the water. As of 2003, the EPA listed forty-five states as having fish consumption advisories due to mercury contamination.
In an effort to reduce the amount of mercury entering the environment, the EPA said in 2000 that it would announce a plan to regulate mercury as a hazardous chemical by the end of 2003. Preparations went forward for three years before the Bush administration decided to downgrade hazard levels of mercury so it could be regulated along with less dangerous chemicals. The plan proposed by the Clinton administration would have cut mercury emissions by 90% by 2008. The EPA's new proposal will call for a 30% reduction by 2010 and a 70% reduction by 2018. The new proposal is a much more comfortable change for the electric industry because it allows electricity companies to use relatively inexpensive technology now and gives them time to continue the development of new, cleaner technology over the next ten years.
Bruce Miller, director of the Center for Fuel Utilization at Penn State University, said, "I think with the current state of the technology it is a good idea to use an incremental approach. But it should be in the context of moving toward zero emissions from coal power plants by 2020."