“From the day of birth to menopause, women should be careful about their consumption of seafood.”
“When you’re feeding your children, you’re feeding your grandchildren: the contaminants get passed on.”
“Anybody who eats lobster tomalley is really on their own.”
“Don’t eat anything out of the Hudson River, ever.”
“There are ten times the amount of PCBs and dioxins in farmed salmon as in wild.”
The comments came from three environmental scientists during a panel discussion in Blue Hill on Aug. 10. Each year the Marine Environmental Research Institute (MERI) presents monthly lectures that focus on interaction between marine life and people, and each August one or more environmental scientists delivers MERI’s annual Elizabeth Mann Borgese Distinguished Speaker lecture.
This year, Deborah Rice, Ph.D., a toxicologist with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention; David Carpenter, M.D. and Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany; and MERI founder and executive director Dr. Susan Shaw addressed the question, is fish safe to eat?
Based on their research, the short answer to the question was “no.”
The more technical answer, based upon species and how and where it was raised, appeared to range from “never” to “occasionally” and, in a few cases, “in moderation.”
But moderation seemed to be in short supply. As Dr. Carpenter said, upon being introduced after Dr. Rice’s lecture, “Susan [Shaw] did a lousy job of choosing speakers because I agree with everything Deborah said.”
In fact, all three speakers agreed with one another. What was promoted as a panel discussion by “three public health experts” on “the pros and cons of eating wild and farmed fish from the Gulf of Maine and other regions of the world” turned out to be three separate lectures on the cons of eating wild and farmed fish.
Rice, Carpenter and Shaw have studied contaminants in various fresh, saltwater and farmed fish, and the results of their analyses contradict the findings of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA]. The EPA recommends one fish meal per week for adults, but Rice said one can of tuna contains 130 percent of the safe level of mercury. “It’s easy to get too much mercury,” Rice said. “The EPA’s safe level is bad advice.”
She recommended those interested go to www.gotmercury.org to check the mercury levels in various fish.
According to the speakers, if we stuck to eating plants, grass-fed and wild meat, we’d be all right, but the bad stuff comes with fats. “PCBs are found in all animal products and the higher the fat, the more PCBs,” Rice said. Wild fish are better than farmed, because the wild fish have to forage for their food, which keeps them lean; farmed fish, the piscatorial equivalent of couch potatoes, just have to open their mouths to eat their dinner.
The speakers showed slides of graphs and charts of their research findings with the country of origin and the chemicals in the fish. Dr. Carpenter, who has been involved in a study of the different types of salmon, stated, “There are ten times the amount of PCBs and dioxins in farmed salmon as in wild.”
There were wonderfully scary quotes, such as, Rice’s “don’t eat anything out of the Hudson River, ever” and Carpenter’s “from the day of birth through menopause.” But what was really scary was Shaw’s claim that chickens are now fed fish meal and fish oil, so even if we decide not to buy that can of tuna, we may get those PCBs, methylmercury, and dioxins in our chicken. Rice also said it is important for women to get Omega 3s during the last trimester of pregnancy because it is important in building brains.
According to the speakers, fish caught with hook-and line is safer than that caught by trawlers. But as Rice said, “We aren’t going to go into a grocery store and ask how the fish was caught.” Dr. Shaw, in her recently published study of wild and farmed salmon, found that the farmed salmon, fed a diet high in fish oils, unlike its wild counterparts, did not accumulate fat just under the skin, but in layers throughout the flesh, like marbled beef, so, she said, “There is no reduction in dioxins when you remove the skin.”
During the question-and-answer period, a woman asked if taking Omega-3 oil in capsule form was dangerous. Dr. Carpenter answered that manufacturers have removed the PCBs from fish oil, not because they were interested in health, but because they want to eliminate the fishy taste.
Another audience member said, “You’ve given us essentially a doomsday scenario; have you any good news?” Carpenter replied, “We are tackling the problem” and said, “People are beginning to pay attention.”