PCBs, Mercury and Worms Oh MY!

HAven't heard much about halibut----what's tour take on these, especially AK hallies???

Again how big of fish? As we fish AK harder every year we see the average size keep dropping. In 2010 the norm was to see landing that were 40-90% 10-20s. These are young fish 5-10 years old and not large enough to be eating too high on the totem pole. Add to that the relatively low amount of industrial pollution in the AK gulf and I wouldn't be worried about contaminates in halibut.

The thing to remember is that the source of mercury in seafood is from industrial pollution. We also subject ourselves to this same pollution on a daily basis. I have always held to the thought that the health benefits of eating wild seafood out weights the possible negative contaminates from pollution.

Sturgeon falls into the far end of what a fish can absorb in it's life time and I don't think anyone has dropped dead from eating it. If you enjoy eating sturgeon then by all means eat it. I just would feel bad filling my freezer with a bunch of very old fish. And I would limit the amount I fed to small kids or pregnant women.

.... my $0.02

Mods, can we break this discussion off into a different thread?  This is a great topic to talk about, just not in the events board.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w63w1r37k11l5757/fulltext.pdf

Average mercury levels in muscle of legal sized sturgeon from the Lower Columbia river was found to be 170.5+-12.7 ppb (parts per billion).

EPA action limit: 300 ppb
Oregon Dept. of Health action limit: 350 ppb
FDA action limit: 1000 ppb

The WA State Fishing Regulations pamphlet does not list any consumption limits for sturgeon.

Interestingly, "In Roosevelt Lake, a reservoir in the upper Columbia River, muscle mercury content in walleye ranged from 110 to 440 ppb (Munn and Short 1997)".  I wonder where the mercury is coming from in Roosevelt Lake?  Natural sources?  Lots of mining in the mountains north of the lake.

And here is something to keep you up worrying at night, "Human Health Evaluation of Contaminants in Puget Sound Fish", from October 2006:

http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/oehas/fish/psampreport-10-06.pdf

I read in other places (and don't remember where and don't feel like googling) that the mercury in Roosevelt was in fact from mining and from Canadian activities. 

Does anyone know of an actual case of mercury poisoning from fish?     I've never seen anything of an ACTUAL mercury poisoning, but hear about shellfish poisioning for example quite a bit, particularly on the east coast.  I feel like it's one of those things where fear-mongering has gone too far... again.

Read the tiny type at the bottom of all that toxicity info and you'll see: *Brought to you by the beef, pork, and chicken lobbies.

Z

This is fear mongering at it's very best, but is something to be aware of.

Most salt water parasites can't even live in the human body... just extra protein.

The primary sources of Mercury in Oregon and Washington are, surprisingly, coal fired power plants and cement kilns.  I say surprisingly because both states have extensive deposits of Cinnabar (the ore from which Mercury is extracted).
The fallout of Mercury from the cement and power sources are so bad in oregon that a lot of downwind reservoirs warn fishermen to not eat ANY of their catch. 

-Spot-

The primary sources of Mercury in Oregon and Washington are, surprisingly, coal fired power plants and cement kilns.  I say surprisingly because both states have extensive deposits of Cinnabar (the ore from which Mercury is extracted).
The fallout of Mercury from the cement and power sources are so bad in oregon that a lot of downwind reservoirs warn fishermen to not eat ANY of their catch. 

-Spot-

I have even heard that we (NW) get a fair amount of this type of "fallout" from China via the Jet Stream...

I have even heard that we (NW) get a fair amount of this type of "fallout" from China via the Jet Stream...

I'm sure we do, but I bet it's nothing in comparison to polution we get from volcanoes for example.

I'm sure we do, but I bet it's nothing in comparison to polution we get from volcanoes for example.

"Volcanic versus anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 emissions

Do the Earth’s volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities? Research findings indicate that the answer to this frequently asked question is a clear and unequivocal, “No.” Human activities, responsible for some 36,300 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2008 [Le Quéré et al., 2009], release at least a hundred times more CO2 annually than all the world’s degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes (Gerlach, 2010).

The half dozen or so published estimates of the global CO2 emission rate for all degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes lie in a range from 132 million (minimum) to 378 million (maximum) metric tons per year (Gerlach, 1991; Varekamp et al., 1992; Allard, 1992; Sano and Williams, 1996; Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998; Kerrick, 2001). If estimate medians and author-preferred estimates of these studies are used to lessen the influence of outlier estimates, the range is restricted to about 150-270 million metric tons of CO2 per year. The current anthropogenic CO2 emission rate of some 36,300-million metric tons of CO2 per year is about 100 to 300 times larger than these estimated ranges for global volcanic CO2 emissions.

In recent times, about 50-60 volcanoes are normally active on the Earth’s subaerial terrain. One of these is Kīlauea volcano in Hawaii, which has an annual baseline CO2 output of about 3.1 million metric tons per year [Gerlach et al., 2002]. It would take a huge addition of volcanoes to the subaerial landscape—the equivalent of an extra 11,700 Kīlauea volcanoes—to scale up the global volcanic CO2 emission rate to the anthropogenic CO2 emission rate. Similarly, scaling up the volcanic rate to the current anthropogenic rate by adding more submarine volcanoes would require the addition of over 100 mid-oceanic ridge systems to the sea floor."

Full article here: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php

Z

I have even heard that we (NW) get a fair amount of this type of "fallout" from China via the Jet Stream...

I'm sure we do, but I bet it's nothing in comparison to polution we get from volcanoes for example.

I think that might not be comparing apples to apples.  My guess is that volcanic dust is a little farther down the harmful scale than mercury and other airborne industrial contaminants

It is definitely an apples to oranges comparison.  I didn't say volcanoes produced more CO2 than mankind does either btw.  I only said we probably get more polution from volcanoes than we do from China (via the jet stream). 

Still though, is there anything out there showing someone actually died or got a cancer or any other ailment from PCBs or Mercury via fish consumption?  (particularly in the NW region)

Still though, is there anything out there showing someone actually died or got a cancer or any other ailment from PCBs or Mercury via fish consumption?  (particularly in the NW region)

I haven't seen gravity or $1,000,000.00 all in once place but for me, there's enough data to support their existence. 

-Spot-

Whole continents eat fish as a major staple of their diet and and many of them eat fish which are considered to be "high risk" for mercury levels. If it was as bad as some people, companies, organizations etc. made it out to be we'd have an epidemic coming from those places. I personally haven't heard of problems like that. Still, eat fish from a spot where a company is dumping bad stuff and sure you'd croak.

Curious so did a quick search "mercury poisoning from eating fish" and got some really contrasting opinions. I thought these were funny.
WebMD's take on it: "For most people, the level of mercury absorbed by eating fish and shellfish is not a health concern. Overall, fish and shellfish are healthy foods."
Peta's take on it: "If you eat fish, your body will absorb mercury from the fish's flesh, and the accumulation of this toxin can lead to serious health problems."

Web MD's article: http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/tc/avoiding-mercury-in-fish-topic-overview
PETA's article: http://www.peta.org/living/vegetarian-living/mercury-in-fish.aspx

Z