| General Overview & Summary Conclusions |
In its apparent haste to dispraise the FDA, the tuna industry and the power generation industry, the Chicago Tribune’s "Mercury Menace" series – and the activist claims upon which it heavily relies – achieves little except frightening some people away from eating highly nutritious fish meals.
If the naturally-occurring micro-traces of mercury in fish sold in the restaurants and supermarkets of Chicago were as harmful as reported, then there would exist an epedimic of fish-mercury poisoning in the Chicago area. Not a single case has reported.
Average Americans consume between 2 to 10 times below the daily intake of essential omega-3 fatty fish oils, compared to consumers in Japan, Singapore, Scandinavia and Spain. Americans need more, not less fish consumption; the overwhelming health benefits clearly outweigh recently conjured, exaggerated risks unsupported by science.
Misinformation in the CT series is troublesome:
1) According to a breadth of studies, the claimed evidence of "learning disabilities in children and neurological problems in adults" from eating fish simply does not exist.
2) Fear and alarmism appear substituted for critical analysis and responsible interpretation of available research data on nutrition and health.
3) The FDA has executed its fish advisory role based on a balancing of the risks and benefits of fish consumption. This has resulted in a well-executed strategy that protects all Americans, including the sensitive sub-populations of women and young children.
4) Claims that fish mercury exposure counteracts the well-known cardio-protective properties of fish oils are not well-supported.
5) Activist literature consistently ignores the complex and nonlinear chain of mercury processes within the ecosystem food web. These processes make it difficult to claim that an active capture of the majority of elemental and ionic mercury emitted from coal-fired power plants -- however “cheap”, urgent or feasible -- will lead to beneficial lowering of the concentration of MeHg in fish.
6) The CT has conducted a rather unremarkable analysis of mercury content in fish sold in Chicago. Consumers should also consider the rich variety of important, essential nutrients (especially the disproportionately higher selenium content) and vitamins from fish intake.
7) The EPA’s current “safe” mercury exposure standard is based on highly conservative assumptions and I therefore overly restrictive.
8) The CT focuses on whether some yellowfin tuna is canned as light tune. There is no demonstrated harm resulting from consuming yellowfin tuna either as canned or fresh/frozen steaks. Seafood mercury content varies depending on many factors beyond human management or control. In fact, yellowfin tuna and other ocean fish mercury levels are likely naturally derived, and not from emissions of mercury from coal-fired power plants or other anthropogenic sources.
9) CT has wrongly accused EPA of (1) downplaying the benefits of reduced mercury pollution and (2) suggesting that the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis report was submitted too late for drafting the power plant mercury rule.
10) The Illinois governor’s proposal for a 90% mercury reduction at state coal-fired power plants should be critically examined regarding health benefits and the real costs of increased electric rates.
11) The much ballyhooed “independent” fish mercury measurements are not unprecedented, having been done previously in a 2003 San Francisco Chronicle series. Results are not outside the bound of data already published by FDA, EPA and the fish industry.
Finally, in evaluating the health consequences of exaggerated fears, the director for risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk (Ropeik, 2004) reported:
“[T]he cumulative load of modern threats may be creating an even greater risk that is largely overlooked: the risk that arises from misperceiving risks as higher as or lower than they actually are. As a result of some of the decisions we make when we are fearful, some of the choices we make when we are not fearful enough and because of the ways our bodies react to chronically elevated levels of stress, the hazards of risk misperception may be more significant than any of the individual risks about which we fret.”
It is the underlying finding of this review that the Chicago Tribune, in league with mercury “activists”, appears engaged in an unscientific fear campaign about mercury in fish; and by doing so, is itself doing terrible harm. |
