Ventura County Star, John Krist
Published May 12, 2001
When it comes to evaluating the potential risk of eating fish contaminated with mercury, consumers don't get clear guidance from the government regulatory system. While the government inspection and notification process is defended by regulators and the food industry, it has been criticized as confusing and inadequate by consumer-protection groups, environmental organizations and even investigators for the General Accounting Office.
"The GAO report confirms that the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is asleep at the wheel when it comes to protecting the public from mercury in seafood," said Michael Bender, executive director of the Mercury Policy Project. "FDA appears intent on protecting the fishing industry at the expense of placing pregnant women and their young at risk from mercury in fish."
The agency maintains, however, that most consumers have little to fear from mercury in fish, and it continues to recommend moderate consumption of most varieties as part of a healthy diet.
Consumer advisories issued
State and tribal governments have primary responsibility for protecting consumers from the health risks of eating contaminated fish caught by recreational anglers. They do this by issuing consumption advisories for the general population, with separate advisories for particularly sensitive populations such as pregnant or nursing mothers and children. The advisories typically recommend limiting consumption of certain species or avoiding them altogether.
Forty-one states have issued fish consumption advisories because of mercury contamination, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. More than 2,000 such advisories have been issued nationwide; the number increased 130 percent between 1993 and 1999.
In California, the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, or OEHHA, has issued consumption advisories for 12 water bodies: Lake Pillsbury, Lake Berryessa, Clear Lake, Lake Herman, San Francisco Bay and Delta, Guadalupe Creek, Guadalupe River, Guadalupe Reservoir, Alamitos Creek, Calero Reservoir, Almaden Reservoir and Lake Nacimiento. It is considering issuing advisories for Tomales Bay and Black Butte Reservoir in Glenn and Tehama counties.
County health authorities have issued their own advisories for Tomales Bay and the South Yuba River, Deer Creek and Bear River watersheds in Yuba, Nevada and Placer counties.
A typical advisory, such as the one issued by OEHHA for the San Francisco Bay-Delta region, recommends the following:
"Adults should eat no more than two meals per month of San Francisco Bay sport fish, including sturgeon and striped bass caught in the delta. (One meal for an adult is about eight ounces). Adults should not eat any striped bass over 35 inches. Women who are pregnant or may become pregnant, nursing mothers and children under age 6 should not eat more than one meal of fish per month. In addition, they should not eat any striped bass over 27 inches or any shark over 24 inches."
The warnings are posted on the agency's Web site and are published in the Department of Fish and Game's Handbook of Sport Fishing Regulations.
Federal agencies involved
In addition to state health departments, two federal agencies issue warnings and recommendations regarding mercury levels in food.
The Food and Drug Administration has primary responsibility for safeguarding the nation's food supply. In 1979, it established an "action level" for mercury of 1 part per million in commercially sold fish, domestic or imported. The action level is not legally enforceable as a reason to ban a product from sale, an FDA spokesman said. It serves only as a guideline for when health warnings may be issued.
The EPA, which regulates discharges into air and water, has a different standard, what it refers to as the "reference dose." This is the amount regulators believe can be ingested daily over the course of a lifetime without causing adverse effects. It is an imprecise tool, difficult for nonscientists to understand. It is prone to particular uncertainty with regard to mercury, which behaves differently in different organisms, differently even from one person to the next.
According to scientists, for example, different parts of the same contaminated body of water may contain widely different levels of methylmercury. Different fish plucked from the same body of contaminated water may have different levels of methylmercury in their flesh. Different people eating fish with the same level of methylmercury in them may absorb different quantities of that methylmercury into their bodies. And different people exposed to the same amount of mercury may exhibit different health effects.
The EPA reference dose for methylmercury is one microgram per kilogram of body weight per day. In other words, agency scientists believe an adult weighing 154 pounds (70 kilos) could probably ingest 70 micrograms -- 70 millionths of a gram -- of mercury a day without harm.
The FDA action level is based on the EPA reference dose. A 154-pound adult eating an average of 70 grams of fish a day would exceed the safe dose if that fish contained more than 1 part per million, or ppm, of mercury. So, the FDA typically issues a public warning when it determines that a commercial product exceeds that level. Seventy grams is about 2.5 ounces -- a very modest serving, equal to less than half a small can of tuna.
Warnings to mothers-to-be
On Jan. 12, the EPA and the FDA issued a blanket advisory suggesting that women who are pregnant or who may become pregnant, nursing mothers and children under 6 avoid eating shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish because of high mercury levels. The agencies also recommended that pregnant women limit consumption of other commercially caught marine fish species to 12 ounces a week.
Nevertheless, the GAO report issued in January concluded that the FDA does not do an adequate job monitoring mercury levels in seafood, and does not include methylmercury as one of the contaminants for which food companies are required to test their products.
The Mercury Policy Project issued a report last year criticizing the FDA for failing to post warnings where they would do the most good -- in the seafood aisles of supermarkets, for example, instead of on its Web site. The report also accused the FDA of caving in to industry pressure by not including tuna among the varieties of fish pregnant women and children should avoid, even though it is the most widely consumed commercial fish in the United States and -- according to the FDA's own data -- frequently exceeds the agency's 1 ppm action level.
An even harsher assessment of the FDA regulations was released in April by the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, and U.S. Public Interest Research Group, or PIRG. Titled "Brain Food: What Women Should Know About Mercury Contamination of Fish," the report says that if all women were to eat 12 ounces a week of the most widely consumed fish -- as the FDA recommends -- they would expose more than a quarter of all babies born each year to a potentially harmful dose of mercury for at least one month of the pregnancy. That's more than 1 million infants. About 20,000 of those infants would be exposed to an excessive level during the entire pregnancy, the report says.
The EWG and PIRG recommend that the FDA expand its warning list and tell women not to eat any tuna steaks, sea bass, marlin, halibut, pike, walleye, white croaker, largemouth bass and oysters from the Gulf of Mexico. The report also suggests that the FDA warn women to eat no more than one meal a month from any combination of the following: canned tuna, mahi mahi, blue mussels, eastern oysters, cod, pollock, salmon from the Great Lakes, blue crab from the Gulf of Mexico, wild channel catfish and lake whitefish.
The only safe options for pregnant women, according to the groups' report, are farmed trout and catfish, fish sticks, summer flounder, wild Pacific salmon, shrimp, croaker, mid-Atlantic blue crab and haddock.
Industry regulates itself
The groups also echoed a criticism being made with increasing frequency: that the FDA seldom tests the food it's supposed to be safeguarding. It generally relies either on self-reporting from the industry -- even though it does not require that the industry test for methylmercury -- or on scientific data that frequently are outdated.
The FDA warning earlier this year about consumption of king mackerel, the report notes, was based on levels found in a study published in 1979. Given the continuing emission of mercury into the environment, it is possible that levels in fish have changed considerably in 22 years.
The report recommends that the FDA expand its sampling program to include fish shown in tests from the 1970s to have elevated mercury levels and which could pose a greater threat to children and pregnant women today: sea bass, bluefish, bonito, Atlantic and Pacific cod, flounder, black and red grouper, halibut, orange roughy, sand perch, white perch, pollock, porgy, red snapper, rockfish, Dover sole, lake trout and yellowtail.
The FDA declined to comment on any of the recent reports criticizing its regulations, but a spokesman reiterated that the agency considers its warnings to consumers to be adequate.
"The advisory speaks for itself," he said.
