New warning for canned tuna

Mercury risk for pregnant women too high, Consumer Reports says

Chicago Tribune, Michael Hawthorne
Published June 5, 2006

The chance that canned tuna will contain high levels of mercury is great enough that pregnant women should never eat it, according to new recommendations from a leading consumer group. Officials at Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, said they decided to recommend a tuna-free diet for pregnant women based on a Tribune investigative series on mercury in fish and the latest testing by the Food and Drug Administration. The newspaper reported late last year that about 15 percent of canned light tuna--the kind of tuna touted by the FDA as a low-mercury option--is made with a species that often contains high amounts of the toxic metal. FDA officials later revealed that 6 percent of canned light tuna sampled between 2001 and 2005 had mercury levels that exceeded the average in canned albacore tuna, which the federal government tells pregnant women and young children to limit eating because it tends to have high levels of mercury. In a two-page article in the July issue of Consumer Reports, the consumer group also urged pregnant women to shun four other kinds of seafood because of mercury concerns--Chilean sea bass, halibut, American lobster and Spanish mackerel. Health experts agree that eating fish is good for most people. But there are concerns that mercury and other pollutants can offset the benefits. It is unclear if a single meal of high-mercury seafood could damage a fetus. Consumers Union, though, concluded that enough experts think the developing brain is so sensitive to mercury that caution should prevail. "This is important information that women need to hear," said Jean Halloran, the director of food policy at Consumers Union and a member of an FDA advisory panel on mercury in seafood. "We think that high exposures, even for a day or two, could be too much of a risk." The FDA and the tuna industry questioned the new advice for pregnant women, saying their own reviews of government tests show there is no reason to doubt the safety of canned tuna. FDA officials said they don't plan to warn the public that some cans of light tuna contain high amounts of mercury because the average level of mercury in canned light tuna remains low. "We stand behind our advice," said David Acheson, the agency's chief medical officer. "What we're striving to do is to strike a balance between the benefits of eating fish and the harmful effects of mercury." When the FDA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a mercury warning for seafood two years ago, the agencies told consumers that canned light tuna was low in mercury. Sensitive groups--women of childbearing age, young children, pregnant women and nursing mothers--should choose this seafood instead of many other kinds, the agencies said. The warning also cautions those groups to avoid four kinds of fish that consistently are high in mercury--swordfish, shark, king mackerel and tilefish--and to eat no more than 6 ounces of canned albacore tuna a week. Read the fulll story on www.chicagotribune.com