The way it boosts neural development in babies and protects the hearts and minds of adults, fish could be considered a health food. Yet the methylmercury pollution that taints fish worldwide can erase these advantages and even trigger profound mental and cardiovascular harm. Several new papers now suggest strategies by which American diners can negotiate the mercury minefield to tap dietary benefits in fish.
Their authors also call for reform of federal guidelines that can confuse consumers on mercury risks from fish.
Mercury is a global pollutant. Some comes from local industrial sources, such as smelters or coal-fired power plants. Some falls out of the atmosphere from distant polluters. There are natural sources, such as erupting volcanoes. And some just remains as a pervasive legacy of historical releases.
Once elemental mercury gets into water, certain bacteria methylate it into its most toxic form, which explains how fish become such a rich dietary source of the toxic metal. The amount of methylmercury that a fish accumulates will rise with mercury contamination in its home waters and also with how high its species resides in the food web — with top predators like shark, swordfish and tuna at the apex. Two of the new studies focused on tuna, the most widely consumed top predator fish.
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