Confused about fish and mercury

[Guest guest]

>>>>

--snip--

> If I'm not mistaken, small quantities of mercury seep into the

ground water

> from natural deposits,...

Right on, ,

Here's a nice little summary from an establishment (UC ) website:

http://seafood.ucdavis.edu/Pubs/mercury.htm

***Hi ,

Let me just clarify, we are not talking about *minute* amounts of naturally

occurring mercury, but rather *toxic* amounts that are pumped into the

environment from industry. See my previous post on mercury toxicity not

being the only health hazard of eating fish, where I mentioned this

Suze Fisher

Web Design & Development

http://www.suscom-maine.net/~cfisher/

mailto:cfisher@...

[Guest guest]

--snip--

> ***Hi ,

>

> Let me just clarify, we are not talking about *minute* amounts of

naturally

> occurring mercury, but rather *toxic* amounts that are pumped into

the

> environment from industry. See my previous post on mercury toxicity

not

> being the only health hazard of eating fish, where I mentioned this

Hi Suze,

Yes, I saw your post after I posted mine. I should have pointed out

that the link was intended to go beyond 's assertion to account

for naturally high mercury levels of large deep ocean fish (tuna,

shark, etc.) The point was made that even specimens preserved from a

century ago have the same high level of mercury in them as modern day.

The polluting of the environment does not seem to be responsible for

the high levels of mercury found in deep ocean fish. Since we have

been eating such fish for centuries, we would do well to investigate

further the actual risk to us, fetuses, and newborns around

consumption of such fish (tuna) rather than to extrapolate the

toxicity of non-deep ocean fish caught by Japanese fisherman from

highly polluted inland waters.

I'm not suggesting that it must be just fine to eat as much tuna as

you want, but the actual toxicity needs to be established in order to

motivate government to establish a realistic effective action level

based on measures of specific types of mercury in specific fish (deep

ocean vs. shallows vs. river/lake). Also, more should be done to

ascertain the toxicity in humans based on Cutler's investigation into

human metabolism and detoxification of these different kinds of

mercury.

Portland, OR