FDA to check tuna. U.S. to investigate mercury levels in canned fish.

[Thom Little]

The Food and Drug Administration will investigate whether tens of millions of cans of tuna sold each year contain potentially hazardous levels of mercury.

Responding to a Tribune series this month on mercury in fish, the FDA said it will review the possibility that there are elevated mercury levels in some cans of "light tuna," one of America's best-selling seafoods and a product the agency has recommended repeatedly as a low-mercury choice.

The Tribune revealed that the U.S. tuna industry is using a potentially high-mercury tuna species, yellowfin, to make about 15 percent of the 1.2 billion cans of light tuna sold annually. Most of these cans are not labeled yellowfin, making it impossible for consumers to know which cans might be high in mercury.

.......

But top consumer and environmental groups called on the tuna industry to stop using yellowfin in canned light tuna.

"It's unforgivable," said Linda Greer, a toxicologist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading conservation group. She said it was ironic that "efforts to recommend canned light tuna to people is undermined by industry shoving contaminated fish into the wrong cans."



http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0512310211dec31,1,2450043.story?coll=chi-news-hed

[Conservativesux]

1. Meanwhile the ADA still claims Mercury tooth fillings are "safe"...

even though they are being banned in many countries in Europe.

Gotta make those profits, no matter who gets harmed in the process.

[ShockediSay]

2. Bush enabled mercury pollution

months ago by reversing rules for regulation of coal fired power plants.

http://www.newstarget.com/006440.html

President Bush has presented a plan to control mercury emissions from coal-fired plants through pollution allowances that can be traded. However, this plan has met with widespread criticism from environmental groups, as it would permit some plants to give off higher mercury emissions from their stacks. This plan, which is friendlier to industry than other plans, would also create areas where dangerous levels of mercury would be tolerated by the EPA....

Accompanying the rule will be a document reversing the agency's formal conclusion of December 2000 that it was "appropriate and necessary" to require utilities to scrub as much mercury as possible from coal-fired power plants.

[philb]

3. Most big predator fish have high levels of mercury

http://www.flcv.com/flhg.html
mackeral, grouper, snapper, tile fish, tuna, shark, swordfish, ling, etc.

and the levels of mercury in most of these fish are documented to cause adverse health effects.

Over 20% of U.S. population tested have been documented to have high/dangerous levels of mercury
and over 30% in coastal states or states where a lot of seafood is eaten
see other thread