News Coverage
State should ID mercury's source
Public Safety: Contamination in fish, waterways won't go away without long-term testing and monitoring
Published July 6, 2003
Here's a fishing trophy you don't want to win: highest mercury contamination in the state. Out of 185 fish sampled for a state Department of Health study, a Lake Samish bass has that distinction with 1,280 parts per billion.
The standard is 150 parts per billion.
Officials are quick to point out that doesn't mean Lake Samish has severe problems. Other fish pulled from that lake had much lower levels of mercury contamination more on par with that found around the state. That's the good news. The bad news is that 95 of the state's water bodies have mercury contamination high enough to raise eyebrows at the state Department of Health. The contamination is not confined to one geographic area or even urban or rural areas. It's everywhere.
Unfortunately, the root of the problem may well remain a mystery because the last state budget did not fund long-term testing and monitoring of mercury in fish and sediments. So, we know the problem exists and is probably worse than most people thought it was, but it doesn't appear that any more information than that is forthcoming in the near future.
We can't afford not to invest money in figuring out where this mercury contamination is coming from. Not only does it pose real heath hazards, but if the problem gets worse, it will be far more expensive to alleviate the longer it goes unchecked. This is one of those poor funding decisions that puts off dealing with a problem until it becomes far more expensive to fix- in terms of dollars, health and environmental consequences.
Why should we care about mercury? Well, for one, mercury is a persistent bio-accumulative toxin, which means that once you eat something with mercury in it, that mercury stays in your body forever and builds as you consume more. Mercury poses particular dangers for women who are pregnant or of child-bearing age because it can severely impact a developing fetus. Mercury can affect the developing nervous system, affecting children's ability to learn, can cause nervous-system and cardiovascular problems in adults, and might cause cancer.
Mercury occurs naturally in the environment, but is also a product of industrial emissions. The mercury becomes airborne and finds its way into waterways, where it settles into the muscles of fish.
Because it's not listed as an ingredient on the food we eat, we really have no way to tell how much mercury we might be taking in. That's why health officials have recommended that people limit their intakes of certain types of fish that can be higher in mercury. Generally, larger fish that live a long time can have higher levels because they consume smaller contaminated fish over a long period of time.
In 2001, the federal Food and Drug Administration issued an alert, warning pregnant women, women of childbearing age, women who are nursing and young children not to eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish.
The Environmental Working Group and U.S. Public Interest Group complained at the time that the warning did not go far enough and pushed to have Gulf Coast oysters and eight more types of fish added to the list, including tuna, sea bass, halibut, marlin, pike and white croaker. Those groups, which released a report called, "Brain Food: What Women Should Know About Mercury Contamination in Fish," also said that canned tuna, mahi-mahi, cod and pollock should not be eaten more than once a month.
Fish the report considers safe include: farm-raised trout and catfish, shrimp, fish sticks, flounder, wild Pacific salmon, croaker, mid-Atlantic blue crab and haddock.
Sport fish that typically have lower levels of mercury include salmon, trout, kokanee and pumpkinseed. Other store-bought fish and shellfish low in mercury include cod, clams, flounder and scallops.
The choice not to aggressively pursue the sources of the mercury in our waterways by providing adequate funding is bad public policy we are likely to regret.