News Coverage
Tainted Fish Warnings Soar
Published June 15, 2002
More American waters than ever before bore warnings against eating their contaminated fish last year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
North Carolina is among a handful of states in which warnings about contamination affect every lake, river and stream.
A number of South Carolina's waterways also have those warnings. It's not that there's more pollution, most scientists agree. Rather, states are doing a better job of checking for contaminated fish and warning the public.
According to data the EPA will announce this week, the number of miles of rivers with health advisories about fish consumption rose 33 percent from 2000 to 2001. One of every seven miles of U.S. rivers last year bore a warning against eating one or more species of their fish.
The total acreage of U.S. lakes with similar warnings rose 7.6 percent from 2000 to 2001. More than a quarter of all lake waters merited warnings.
Of the five toxins that officials monitor, the biggest and fastest-growing problem is mercury. It comes mostly from coal-fired power plant emissions that settle into waters.
Mercury hinders brain development in fetuses and young children, so women of childbearing age and young children are cautioned especially to curb their consumption of seafood likely to contain mercury.
A statewide N.C. advisory warns women who are pregnant or of child-bearing age, and children under 15, not to eat several species of fish that are commonly tainted by mercury.
Those are four ocean species - shark, swordfish, tilefish and king mackerel, and three freshwater species - blackfish, largemouth bass and jack fish. The state advises everyone else to make no more than one meal a week of those fish.
South Carolina has fish-consumption advisories due to mercury in 35 rivers and streams and in 17 lakes. South Carolina also has an advisory for king mackerel that is similar to North Carolina's.
"It's certainly still safe to fish on most of our lakes and rivers," said Forbes Darby of the American Sportfishing Association. "We've made huge progress in the quality of our waterways."
One problem, said Jane Houlihan of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based environmental organization, is that states differ greatly in how they test fish and how they warn the public.
She said some states - Ohio, New Jersey and Minnesota - have strict mercury contamination thresholds, but others, such as North Carolina and Virginia, have very loose ones.
Federal regulations could make a difference. President Bush announced a plan earlier this year to cut mercury emissions by more than half by 2010 and by 69 percent by 2018.
The number of miles of river subject to mercury-in-fish warnings increased 48 percent from 2000 to 2001. In lakes, the increase was 7 percent.
Warnings for fish containing the banned pesticide DDT rose about 6 percent. However, warnings for cancer-causing chemicals such as PCB, chlordane and dioxins all dropped from 2000 to 2001.