News Coverage
Senators write FDA: Is seafood safe?
Published March 1, 2002
Five U.S. senators have sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration questioning whether the agency is protecting the public from dangerous methylmercury in the nation's seafood supply.
Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, John Edwards, D-N.C., and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., expressed concern that FDA policies leave "pregnant women, women of childbearing age and other seafood consumers vulnerable" to methylmercury exposure, which the senators describe as "toxic to the developing fetal brain and associated with a wide range of health effects in children and adults."
Meanwhile, a Washington-based group that researches environmental and health issues planned to release a report today accusing the FDA of buckling under to the seafood industry and withholding from pregnant wom en critical information about mercury contamination in tuna.
The Mobile Register, which has published numerous stories about mercury dangers in seafood, has reported that the U.S. Tuna Industry, an industry lobbying group, pressed the FDA not to issue any kind of consumption warnings for tuna.
In a presentation prepared for the FDA, the industry said that consumption warnings would "encourage spurious lawsuits" against companies such as StarKist, Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea. Such lawsuits, according to the companies, would be filed by people "who will now believe that the seafood product they thought was safe has carried the risk of adverse neurodevelopmental deficits."
The senators' Feb. 25 letter requests that FDA explain why it has accepted a more lenient standard for mercury than the one recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Academy of Sciences. The senators say the FDA has "loosened" its mercury standard, in spite of "scientific advances and a growing understanding" of mercury's toxic effects.
The letter also questions the agency's refusal to list all fish species identified with high mercury levels.
Last year, mercury testing by the Mobile Register revealed that some of the most popular commercial and recreational species in the Gulf of Mexico -- including grouper, amberjack, cobia and redfish -- were likely so contami nated with methylmercury that they would be banned for sale under FDA guidelines.
Register-sponsored hair tests of 70 coastal residents found high mercury levels in people who regularly eat these large Gulf fish. In some cases, the Register testing revealed levels 11 times higher than the EPA's safe level for mercury in the human body.
The EPA has identified coal-burning power plants as the primary source of mercury pollution in the country, although the Register has discovered that oil and gas rigs may be an important source in the Gulf.
A week ago, Sen. Richard Shel by, an Alabama Republican, wrote to the heads of EPA and the U.S. Interior Department's Minerals Management Service asking the agencies to ensure that mercury from oil and gas operations is not harming the environment or affecting Gulf fish.
Recent Register stories revealed that sand around some Gulf rigs is more contaminated with mercury than sediments at federal Superfund sites closed to fishing. The Register found that high mercury levels in creatures living around the rigs appear to be closely related to levels in the sand around the rigs.
The report being released today by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group claims that the FDA considered warning expectant mothers to limit their tuna consumption to nine ounces a week instead of the current standard of 12 ounces a week.
Register reporting based on EPA documents has shown that even at nine ounces of tuna a week, a person could easily exceed the safe level for mercury in the human body.
Richard Wiles with the Environmental Working Group said that the Register's reporting on mercury has revealed "that this is a serious problem. In your articles, you have this woman who only eats two cans of tuna and she has a tremendously high mercury level ... that really makes the case. If she got that level from two cans a week, imagine the woman who eats a can a day."
In a November story, the Register reported that an Alabama medical technician who said she eats two cans of tuna a week had five times more mercury in her body than the EPA's safe level of one part per million.
A seafood consumption survey conducted in 1996 by the state of New Jersey found that frequent consumers of canned tuna routinely exceeded the EPA's safe level for methylmercury.