04-20-06: State Adds Fish To List

State adds fish to list: Health agency offers advice on levels of mercury

A recent advisory from North Carolina health officials says that 22 kinds of seafood have dangerously high levels of mercury, up from seven kinds in previous advisories.
Recent additions to the list include some popular fish species, such as Spanish mackerel, and for the first time the state has issued a statewide warning for a species, largemouth bass. Other advisories have been restricted to fish caught in certain areas, mostly along the coast.

The new advisory suggests that most adults eat the 22 kinds no more than once a week, and that women of childbearing age, pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under age 15 not eat those fish at all. At certain levels, mercury has been found to damage the kidneys and the brain.

The new species were added to the list this year because of newly collected data from state and federal researchers, said Luanne Williams, a toxicologist with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

She said, though, that most popular kinds of seafood are still low in mercury. The advisory lists 34 low-mercury species, including shrimp, salmon and scallops.

"You're going to find mercury in almost all fish and seafood. It's just naturally going to be there because of their feeding habits," Williams said. "We encourage people to eat fish low in mercury. It's a good, healthy source of protein."

Williams said that the state's threshold for a safe amount of mercury is 0.4 milligrams for each kilogram of food. Samples from fish and other kinds of seafood showed that the average amount of mercury exceeded that threshold in 22 species, she said.
Seventeen of the species are saltwater fish. The other five are freshwater fish.
Sean McKeon, the executive director of the N.C. Fisheries Association, an industry group, said he had not seen the new advisory but that he was skeptical.

"They're erring very heavily on the side of caution," Mc-Keon said. "It's like saying, 'If you stare at the sun for two seconds, your eyes are going to burn out of your head.' We all know that's not true, but it's best to tell kids that.

"I just worry that, in the name of so-called science, people tend to make crises where none exist."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lists only four kinds of seafood that people should avoid because of high mercury levels: king mackerel, shark, swordfish and tilefish. It does suggest, though, that people eat up to only two meals a week with seafood and that they follow the advice of local authorities.

Advocates for the environment said that the updated advisory points to a need for greater regulation of the state's coal-fired power plants. They said that the power plants create more mercury pollution than anyone else.

"While these advisories are important, regulating mercury when it's on the dinner table is not the answer. We must take serious steps to control the pollution at its source - coal-fired power plants," John Suttles, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in a news release.

Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy Corp., said that the company is in the process of installing scrubbers on most of its coal-fired power plants.

Eighty-five percent of its coal production will eventually be scrubbed, he said, and although the changes are not intended to cut mercury pollution, they will do so as a secondary effect. "We've been looking at this since 2003," Williams said. "We've been investing a lot of money to figure out how to measure mercury, and we're encouraged by those results, but we still have a lot of work to do."

Whatever the source of the mercury, a state advisory to eat less seafood could affect the state's commercial- and recreational-fishing industries.

"It's another indication that if we don't do something to remedy the problem, we're going to have some real problems with our tourist industry," said Todd Miller of the N.C. Coastal Federation.