Current Events 7

The mercury in that Tuna
Stephen Ornes
Monday, Math 10th. 2010
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/59035/titl/FOR_KIDS_The_mercury_in_that_tuna
These are some definitions taken directly from the site that helped me to better understand the point of this article:
mercury - A naturally occurring element that is found in air, water and soil. It exists in several forms: elemental or metallic mercury, inorganic mercury compounds, and organic mercury compounds (EPA definition).
neurotoxic - A poison that damages or destroys nerve tissue.
parts per million - A measure of concentration: the umber of parts of a chemical found in one million parts of a particular gas, liquid or solid (EPA definition).
I’m sure that everyone has heard that eating fish is very very healthy and that we should intake a lot of this sort of food. But is it always true? No. This article showed us the opposite thing. We should be very careful which type of fish we are going to eat. For example eating fish can be bad for us because when fish swim in polluted waters, the poisonous compounds, like mercury, can get in the fish, and later when we eat it, we can get contaminated too. The mercury is especially concerning because even small amounts of this elements can lead to serious heart and nervous system disease. That is showed in cases of tuna, as it is showed by three different studies that have conducted scientists from Columbia University in New York. They have investigated the amount of mercury in different type of tuna fish, and they have concluded that the bigger the fish is, the more mercury it will contain. (Example: Tuna with yellowfin had less mercury than tuna from bluefin, which is larger. They have also concluded that restaurant tuna has more mercury than grocery tuna, and that this amount is much bigger than it is recommended by EPA (EPA recommendation is that fish should not contain more than 0.5 parts per million (or ppm)). Second study showed that canned tuna has less mercury than the one served in restaurants and the third study showed that different type of fish –not only tuna have different amounts of mercury which can be up to 100 times bigger than EPA recommendation. These amounts are given in the following table and everyone should be careful when deciding which fish he is going to eat.
This table provides information about level of mercury in different fish type, and I hope that it will help us to decide which one we will consume.
All the scientists are appealing to EPA to be more strict in determination of the mercury level, but they have also underlines that every producer should give clear notification about all the contents of the food he/she serves or produces etc…
I think that we all can eat fish and still be healthy by carefully reading of all information about the fish.