How can you protect your future child from mercury?
It’s hard to keep up with the latest findings. Almost every week a new study graces the newspaper claiming another finding concerning fish and your health. The studies often include implications regarding your child’s future health and warn of mercury’s potential dangers.
Seafood can deliver both a health risk and a health benefit, and it is important to know the facts.
The FDA recommends that Americans select low mercury fish, and avoid high mercury fish.
For women of childbearing age, who might become pregnant, or are pregnant or nursing, and young children FDA says:
1. Do NOT eat Shark, Swordfish, King Mackerel or Tilefish because they contain high levels of mercury.
2. Limit consumption of albacore tuna and tuna steaks to 6 oz. per week, or less.
3. Eat up to 12 ounces (2 average meals) a week of a variety of fish and shellfish that are lower in mercury (shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock).
What’s so Dangerous?
Fish is an excellent source of omega-3s that can help improve visual acuity, gestational length, and cognitive development for infants. However, with high fish consumption studies reveal that the benefits may be erased by contaminants such as mercury. An EPA scientist has estimated that hundreds of thousands of newborns each year may have increased risk of learning disabilities associated with in utero exposure to methylmercury.
What makes methylmercury especially dangerous to pregnant women is its ability to travel from the mother’s blood to the developing child (3). As a result, the FDA/EPA advisory and others target women of childbearing age to warn them about their fish consumption.
The Problem
The FDA advisory is not doing its intended job: alerting the public to the risks of mercury. In fact, 31% of pregnant women, women planning on becoming pregnant and nursing mothers did not know that seafood with high mercury levels could be harmful (1).
Wouldn’t it be helpful if the FDA advisory was posted on a sign? It would be easy to read and right at the seafood section when you’re deciding whether to cook salmon, shrimp, or swordfish for dinner. According to a report published by Oceana, a conservation group, California is the only state that requires these signs to be posted. Other states, such as Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi, and North Dakota have no signs in their grocery stores warning their consumers about mercury exposure. In addition, 16 other states have less than 5% of their stores making this FDA advice available (2).
What You Can Do
This website includes an interactive map, which shows stores who have agreed to post these signs. At the site you can find out whether your local grocery store is on the green list and how to contact your grocery store and ask them to post these signs. The signs provide valuable information on how to prevent unwanted intake of mercury. Consumers can choose low mercury fish over high mercury fish, allowing them to get the benefits of fish without the risks. A wealth of information exists, so let’s put it to good use. Then everyone can benefit in making healthy food choices for themselves and their families.
References
1. Center for Science in the Public Interest. “Is it high or is it low?” July 6, 2006. (http://www.cspinet.org/new/200607061.html).
2. Oceana. “VITAL SIGNS: The status of mercury warning signs in U.S. grocery stores.” (http://www.oceana.org/fileadmin/oceana/images/greenlist/VITALS_REPORT.pdf)
3. US Environmental Protection Agency. “Mercury: Human Exposure.” (http://www.epa.gov/mercury/exposure.htm)
4. US Food and Drug Administration. “Background for the 2004 FDA/EPA Consumer Advisory: What You Need to Know About Mercury in Fish and Shellfish.” (http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/ mercury/backgrounder.html).
