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Chicago Tribune "Kirk urges FDA to boost efforts" (Article, December 13, 2005). Response: This article apparently reports on a December 12, 2005 congressional “Dear Colleague" letter from Representative Mark Kirk of Illinois. It states that Dr. Jane Hightower tested "129 children" for mercury and found that “89 percent had elevated levels of mercury in their blood." The purpose of the in-house missive is to persuade Members of Congress that a serious health hazard exists; but how accurate are the claims? The statement reflects common confusion about, and misrepresentation of Hightower’s findings (see Sec. 9). Epidemiologists found the single paper by Hightower and Moore proved nearly irrelevant for health effects of dietary methylmercury exposure. The two reported having tested 123 patients of which only 7 were children, not 129. Of the 7 children listed in Table 2 of Hightower and Moore (2003), 4 had blood mercury above 5.0 ppb – a sample irrelevantly small. What’s more, Hightower herself clearly stated that these children were "not used for statistical analysis." Hightower and Moore (2003) did conclude that "89%" of 123 patients had blood mercury levels exceeding their own arbitrarily chosen 5.0 ppb RfD (instead of the actual 5.8 ppb established by EPA). There is nothing extraordinary about these levels. The "Dear Colleague" letter from Rep. Kirk contained two additional claims: • "The U.S. government recently estimated that about 410,000 American babies were born last year with a high risk of mercury poisoning." The first relies on the CT claim (December 11th) that "a recent government study estimated 410,000 babies are born each year at risk for mercury poisoning.” Neither the CDC, EPA nor any government entity has ever issued such an official estimate. This is thoroughly examined in Sec. 2. As for the second claim, it is shown above (Sec. 4 and 11) that the Canadians have not banned any sale of walleye recently; but this is a minor point. Whatever the source of the confusion, those receiving the letter were misinformed. |
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