isn't it child abuse to feed mercury tainted fish to children?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-tc-nw-mercury-fish-0819-0820aug20,0,3541262.story


Mercury found in every U.S. fish tested


A federal study of mercury contamination released Wednesday found the toxic substance in every fish tested at nearly 300 streams across the country, a finding that underscores how widespread mercury pollution has become.

-snip-

Mercury can damage the nervous system and cause learning disabilities in developing fetuses and young children. The main source of the mercury, according to the researchers, is emissions from coal-fired power plants. The mercury rains down into waterways where natural processes convert it into methylmercury -- a form that allows the toxin to wind its way up the food chain into fish.

Some of the highest levels in fish were detected in the remote blackwater streams along the coasts of the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana where surrounding forests and wetlands help in the conversion.

Mercury was also detected in high concentrations in Western streams that drain areas mined for mercury and gold.
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isn't it?

nt

Or is it about your loony anti-vaccine bullshit?

?????

By that time we'll have killed our oceans. If our oceans die, our planet will die.

It's as simple as that.

And yes, Ive stopped eating ALL fish and seafood due to mercury poisoning.

recd

I live on the coast, around a lot of independent fishermen. They love to talk about the end of seafood. It goes along with their "buy local shrimp!" bumper-stickers.

I'm very relieved to hear that there is no problem!
Thanks for setting the record straight.
Silly fishermen! Silly- willy scientists, too!

What a bunch of joy kills.

The planet is fine, relax.

WE will die. Big deal.

Why consider the question of abuse only when human children are involved?

It's world abuse.

This alarm, that only goes off when children are being injured, is part of the problem. It should go off for little fish, too. Children are in the same situation as little fish. They suffer together. They will thrive or perish together.

If we keep drawing the line at child abuse, and acting like it's OK to hurt the world only up to the point where it hurts our kids, there will be no more fish or children. It is not possible to separate them. Empathy for both is necessary to protect either.

nt

too much sugar
too much meat
unbalanced diets leading to obesity and diabetis,

...

Where do you stop?

I am all for regulating emissions, but it is not child abuse more than many other things we see everyday.

nt

and people wont own the danger of mercury in fish cause then it challenges mercury in vaccine and flu shots

the other things you mentioned.

i can also mention other contaminents in our foods.

lol

nt

no problem

"While all fish had traces of mercury contamination, only about a quarter had levels exceeding what the Environmental Protection Agency says is safe for people eating average amounts of fish."

Plus, most people don't regularly eat freshwater fish caught from US lakes and rivers. Most would be caught and eaten by recreational anglers.

areas mentioned in the article?

you would be surprised how many people eat fresh water fish.

and reports have been out for some time about mercury in salt water fish - salmon and tuna to name two.

More than 1 part per thousand? part per million? per billion? per trillion? Dose matters.

From what kinds of sources. Hg occurs naturally in some areas. Natural occurrence isn't always safe, but certainly isn't pollution requiring remediation under current law. "Let's clean up after Mother Nature!"

In what form? Elemental? Inorganic? Methy? Ethyl? Methyl mercury hangs around and is nasty. Ethyl mercury sluices out much, much faster than methyl mercury does.

Of course, I'm just a linguist, not a Columbia-educated biology major with a grad degree in Environmental Science like the reporter. Her secondary school science teacher certification must have interfered with what she decides is important to relate.

nt

My, there are a lot of words all about mercury here. Thanks for the clarifying vocabulary lesson.

I guess there's nothing to worry about, after all. Never has been, really.

Man, what a relief. You really brightened my day. These wacky pollution conspiracy nuts were bringing me down.

Obviously, there is no cause for alarm or action here. What we need is a more accurate definition of the word mercury.

I refuse to become alarmed until someone produces one, and the situation has been thoroughly linguistically defined. Or

perhaps another scientific study will give me what I need to sleep soundly through the whole thing. Action in the face

of such vague language would be at best futile, or at worst downright dangerous. What if things got too clean in our

environment? Talk about unfair to the health insurance industry! Thanks for sticking up for them.



Do you have more magic words to ease my mind on climate change and nuclear waste now? I would like to see those issues

vanquished as well.

But fish sticks are good to go if you heat them real hot in the over to drive the mercury off. Mercury boils at 676 degrees Fahrenheit, so I mean real HOT!

See Material Safety Data Sheet for methyl mercury http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/DI/dimethylmercury.html

The EPA limit for daily consumption of methyl mercury is 0.1 microgram / kilogram body weight.

I live near many abandoned mercury mines and we live with the damage done many decades ago. The area had a long history on mining, starting with actually panning mercury (the pure metal)in the creeks, it was that prevalent. We have built retaining/settling damns to contain the Organo-mercury compounds but it's like closing the barn door after the livestock has scattered. I do not eat fresh water fish from inland California waters.

LOL. Maybe other adults can get their kids to eat fish but not mine.

Could you grasp that not all families are like yours?

too many toxins in food and water otherwise. We should avoid giving children either food or water to avoid harm. :sarcasm:

;-)

'em all!

If a person feeds unbelievable amounts of fish to a child knowing that these amounts contain harmful levels of mercury, then it's child abuse in my opinion. The scenario is unlikely, though.

It's been estimated that every single tributary of every single river in Northern California has at least a ton of mercury in it on average, and some individual streams have hundreds of tons. At current rates of decline, it will take several thousand years for them to flush themselves back out, and there will be detectable mercury levels in some streams for more than a hundred thousand years. It's a legacy of the 1850's gold rush, and there isn't a thing we can do about it.

I fly fish, and enjoy it, but I'm strictly catch and release in California. I only eat my catch if I'm camping, and even then limit fish dinners to one night of the outing. Eating more than that is just stupid.

Here is southern Louisiana, seafood is a relatively inexpensive alternative to red meat. However, due to the amount of pollutants in the water, I am afraid to feed alot of it to my children. Farm-raised fish are another option but even there the water quality fluctuates. Damned if you do, damned if you don't....