Wondering how much fish is safe to eat? I recommend following the government recommendations; not the bogus calculations from The Center for Consumer Freedom. I was first clued into the Center for Consumer Freedom’s fish and mercury calculator by Food & Water Watch’s Blog.

The Center for Consumer Freedom bills itself as an organization promoting personal responsibility and free choice in consumption habits, but it is best known for opposing government smoking bans in public places and was, in fact, started with seed money from Phillip Morris. More recently, the center has fought nutrition labeling requirements on restaurant menus. I’m all for free choice, but to make a fully-informed free choice, consumers need information and transparency.

Users of the calculator have only to enter their weight and usual portion size of different kinds of fish they consume and the calculator spits out the amount of fish the user can safely eat per week, in pounds, before being in danger from mercury poisoning. According to Food & Water Watch, the calculations are bogus. The calculator in question ignores the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) uncertainty factor that accounts for variations in sensitivity to mercury in the population.

This is a real concern. Safety margins are a good thing. You see, I actually know someone who was diagnosed with mercury poisoning from eating fish. In general, she ate a tuna sandwich several days of the week and sushi fairly often. She certainly didn’t eat the pounds and pounds of fish that the How Much Fish Calculator says a person of her size can eat without becoming sick. (Here’s an article from Mother Jones about a woman who became sick from eating canned tuna, which many people think should carry a warning label.)

Maybe these two people were more sensitive to mercury than others and that’s why they became sick, but that’s precisely why the EPA uses the reference dose it does – to take into account sensitive populations. The EPA explains it thus: “In general, the RfD is an estimate (with uncertainty spanning perhaps an order of magnitude) of a daily exposure to the human population (including sensitive subgroups) that is likely to be without an appreciable risk of deleterious effects during a lifetime.”

Far worse, I think, is the Center for Consumer Freedom’s lack of warning for pregnant women. Children are particularly susceptible to nervous system damage while their brains and nervous systems are still developing. According to the EPA in its studies on mercury, “the nervous system is considered to be the most sensitive target organ.” Naturally lower weight individuals (and fetuses) are in greater danger of accumulating dangerous levels of mercury.

According to the EPA, “Investigators have found that the placenta is not a barrier to the transfer of methylmercury from the mother to the developing fetus. Typically, a strong correlation exists between maternal-blood mercury concentrations and fetal-blood mercury concentrations, as shown by cord-blood. Overall, data from these studies indicate that cord-blood mercury is higher than maternal blood mercury.” Not only does the calculator not account for pregnant mothers, but The Center for Consumer Freedom encourages pregnant women to eat lots of fish for smarter children!

With recent news on NPR of a Federal study showing widespread mercury contamination throughout the nation’s streams, it behooves consumers to err on the side of caution when eating fish.

Not sure if you’re getting too much mercury with your Omega-3’s? See the actual government recommendations on fish consumption. Personally, I’d add tuna to that list, both canned and fresh, unless you know that it came from a small, young species of tuna. All large, longer-lived species at the top of the food chain tend to bio-accumulate toxins in their flesh as they age.

Image: rubberslippersinitaly

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

The post Mercury in Seafood: How Do You Know How Much Fish You Can Safely Eat? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Our national innocence regarding the safety of our food supply is fast eroding. From salmonella in tomatoes and peanut butter, to E. coli in spinach, how can we trust that the food we eat is safe and the government we pay taxes to is paying attention?

Two recent examples: Last fall, Mother Jones broke the story that canned tuna contains dangerous levels of mercury and that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) knew this when it left canned tuna off the seafood advisories it released in 2001. This week, two studies are out showing that nearly one-third of popular food and drink products listing High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) as the first or second ingredient contain mercury.

So much for that standby childhood lunch of a tuna sandwich and a soda – children are especially susceptible to mercury poisoning.

In the case of mercury contamination of HFCS, Grist reports that the FDA has known about it since 2005 and that the information was finally revealed when a researcher left the agency and published her work in one of the studies just released.

The Corn Refiners Association, conveniently located in Washington D.C. near Capitol Hill, released a statement about one of the studies saying, “This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance.” And while it’s true that not all HFCS is produced using the chemical processes that cause mercury contamination, much of it still is.

In addition to its prior knowledge of the mercury contamination in HFCS, the FDA has done its part in helping HFCS become the ubiquitous ingredient it is. In 1983, the FDA formally listed high fructose corn syrup as safe for use in food. That decision was reaffirmed in 1996 and in 2008, when the agency classified HFCS as a “natural” product.

Despite the FDA’s friendly stance, HFCS had a publicity problem long before the sweetener was found to be contaminated with mercury. Nutritionists have linked the pervasive ingredient to obesity and other health problems.

To counter bad publicity, The Corn Refiners Association launched an approximately $30 million public relations and advertising campaign last summer to convince consumers that HFCS was safe and as natural as sugar. Full page newspaper ads and television commercials ran in the nation’s most prominent media outlets. The blogosphere, including Ecosalon, was not convinced.

In the case of canned tuna, the FDA released an updated advisory in 2003 listing chunk light canned tuna as a “low mercury” seafood. Though the agency didn’t require this information to appear in stores or on tuna cans, the mild warning caused a minor drop in sales. The industry responded by launching a major $25 million campaign touting tuna’s Omega-3 fatty acid content and other health benefits.

Faced with the knowledge that our government agencies are more interested in protecting industry profits than protecting our health, what are we to do?

Trust your instincts. If a cheap, highly subsidized and highly processed ingredient suddenly shows up in a lot of different foods, be suspicious.

If the government drafts an advisory warning the public about contamination of a commodity product (like tuna) but pointedly avoids warning the public about branded versions of that commodity (canned tuna) be suspicious. Tangled red tape is a warning sign.

Be wary of major advertising campaigns by industry groups. You can bet if X industry trade group is spending millions of dollars trying to convince you that a particular product or ingredient is good for you, it probably isn’t.

Speak up.
Tell the new administration in Washington that you want the government to put your health before the health of agribusiness balance sheets.

Image: tsuacctnt

The post Mercury and the Retrograde FDA appeared first on EcoSalon.