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This little critter is like Wolverine—he actually sticks his ribs through his skin, onto which he secretes poison, to stab any attackers. You'd think it'd hurt like hell, but they heal up every time.
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The World Health Organization wants people to know that homeopathy is bullshit; if you're sick, take medicine. Telling somebody that a homeopathic "medicine" can treat a serious disease is as dangerous and irresponsible as telling them that they should just *pray* for their AIDS to be cured.
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1. The longstanding, contextualizing facts. 2. How the reporter knows these things to be true. 3. What about this topic remains unknown. Every so often I find myself edging into these topics, but I always feel very un-journalist when I do such things. I'll try to learn to quash those feelings.
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Every single wild fish in the US is tainted with mercury. But, by all means, let's keep building coal-fired power plants. Because, really, do we *need* fish?
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The State of Michigan released a state strategy report on mercury last year. It’s a heck of a document. Can’t say I agree with all their recommendations, but the compilation of data is great. (Link to the pdf report can be found on the site below:)
http://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,1607,7-135–184638–,00.html
Anyway, the big take home message for me was that it doesn’t matter if Michigan or Virginia or California or Oklahoma immediately shut down all the coal plants. Once the emissions hit the air, they travel around the globe. Estimates are roughly 5 million pounds of mercury are released the air per year globally. It’s got to come down someplace. I’m not opposed to burning fossil fuels, but it needs to be done so much more efficiently with strict regulations on emissions.
And in the same string of thought, have you looked at mercury reporting in seafood? With my wife being pregnant again, I’ve reviewed the numbers yet again and I’m still baffled by them. Just look at the sample population sizes and dates of some of the studies then try to tell me how that could possibly accurately represent all the frozen fish at your local grocery store:
http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/Product-SpecificInformation/Seafood/FoodbornePathogensContaminants/Methylmercury/ucm115644.htm
I find mercury reporting in seafood awfully confusing; my solution is to very rarely eat any. Coincidentally, just this afternoon I installed Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch on my iPhone, because I do intend to start eating more fish. It’s awfully good for you, but when actually standing at the fish counter, the array of information required to make a responsible choice (healthfulness, environmental degradation, overfishing, buying American, buying local, mercury content, etc.) is pretty overwhelming. Whether or not this program will help, given the unhelpful array of data about mercury content from the FDA (they tested a grand total of 4 haddock?) on which I assume it’s partially premised, I don’t know.
Waldo – don’t quash your instincts. Often a news story leaves me with more questions than answers because the reporter was lazy or the copy was over-edited. Frustrating!
I’ve tried finding a copy of the 1978 NMFS trace element study online with no success. I’m baffled that the FDA, in some instances, is still relying on data from 1978 and offering consumption advice based on it.
I’m more troubled by the actual data that is on the FDA’s Hg fish recommendation chart. Look at the differences between mean Hg and max for oysters. There’s a 19 fold difference between mean and max. I understand the need to remove statistical outliers from a study, but when your sample size is only 38 oysters? 24 shrimp sampled on the chart and all below detection limits. I can go to any grocery store and get a bag of 100 shrimp right now. And I bet I can find a variety of shrimp caught from around the globe. I have to think the sample size numbers are not being reported properly in that chart. I did some digging and found an organization that is already looking into my concerns about the FDA’s reporting:
http://www.gotmercury.org/article.php?id=1339
For the most part, Hg and MeHg in seafood isn’t a big deal for adults, yet. For developing fetuses, there’s scientific data that raises cause for concern with Hg/seafood consumption (hence all the warnings). You’d think people who caused a kerfuffle over mercury preservatives in vaccines would look at the Hg and MeHg numbers in seafood and would go bonkers. Maybe those people never ate seafood.
I love seafood and can’t imagine completely cutting it from my diet. There are local lakes and streams I won’t eat fish from. Hard to manage the frozen seafood in stores like that when you have no idea where it was caught. So a person is forced to rely on the FDA data.
Personally, I find most fish bought from a grocery store to be terrible. It smells, well, fishy. Fish isn’t supposed to smell fishy. That smell is composed of molecules that only develop as the fish starts to decay. Mmmmm, rotting fish meat. No thanks.
The fish sold in stores around here was all caught hundreds or even thousands of miles away. This is one of the various reasons why I only eat fish about once every week or two when I go out to a lake or a pond and catch them myself. We always eat them within the same day and often I literally have filets frying in a pan while the poor severed head probably has a few brain cells still trying to figure out what the hell just happened.
DGIF is perennially furious at mainstream recreational fishermen for throwing everything they catch back into the water. Their whole management and stocking system is based around the need for X mature fish to be removed each year. Universal catch-and-release screws that up. So please do your part by picking up a $15 rod and reel combo and a $15 fishing license and then catch a bunch of fish and eat them.
DGIF?
Jackson, next thing you know, you’ll have to start a fish-catching class (similar to the deer-hunting one) where you can teach some techniques, and show us city folk how to scale, gut, and filet a freshly caught fish.
Meri,
DGIF = Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
Fishing is ridiculously easy. Nobody needs to take a class on it. Once you have the thing flopping around on the shore, the execution, gutting and scaling are pretty self explanatory. I’m sure there are a million Youtube videos showing how to do all of this.
“So please do your part by picking up a $15 rod and reel combo and a $15 fishing license and then catch a bunch of fish and eat them.”
Unless you leave in Northern VA. Please don’t eat out of the Potomac. If you’re into vacationing in Florida, go to the Keys. Or Maryland if you want to be relatively local. There are captains out there, several of whom I am friends with (yay disclosure), who will take you out fishing, freeze everything you catch and mail it up to you.
It’s good times, especially when you get out deep enough to start catching the weird stuff. Take a bunch of people with you; you’ll wind up with about a year’s worth of fish, packaged up by the pros and mailed to your house––most captains have big freezers and will hold your and ship it so it arrives the day you get back home.
Genevieve,
I live in Virginia, not Northern Virginia. The water is fine here, so long as you aren’t eating fish 3 times a day, 7 days a week.
Jack, I figured that was the case. (also, I bet you don’t “leave” in Northern VA. I should be paying attention in class, not talking about fish.). In Northern Virginia, you don’t catch the fish. The fish catch you.
And they glow in the dark.
Ok, not quite, but it’s pretty gross. If you get checked for a fishing license there, they’ll also remind you that you really shouldn’t be eating anything you catch in the Potomac.