New Mercury in Fish Health warning to be issued shortly

By CRAIG PITTMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 6, 2003

ST. PETERSBURG -- Six years ago, the state Health Department issued a warning about which species of fish contain so much mercury that their consumption should be limited or eliminated.

Since then, biologists have found more species that should be added to the list, including such popular catches as amberjack, bluefish and cobia. For more than a year, the state Department of Health has struggled with updating the mercury warning.

But so far health officials have not produced any new public advisories.

"They keep changing their minds about how they want to say it," said George Henderson, a senior scientist with the Florida Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg who is concerned about the delay.

A spokesman for the Health Department, Bill Parezik, said the agency was in the final stages of preparing a new advisory.

"Within the next month we'll have brochures out," Parezik said Friday.

Meanwhile, in the 18 months health officials have been working on the new advisory, people have continued eating some of those fish without knowing about the risk.

"It would be nice if the information could be available to assist with health advisories," Henderson said.

Mercury is a heavy metal that, in large enough doses, can be toxic to mammals, birds and fish, causing severe nerve and brain damage, sight and hearing loss and birth defects.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the discovery that mercury-contaminated food had poisoned hundreds of people in Japan and Iraq first brought attention to the health effect. But that has not ended the consumption of mercury-tainted fish. Two years ago the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 60,000 pregnant women nationwide put their fetuses at risk of neurological damage because of mercury in the fish they ate.

Mercury occurs naturally, but air pollution -- such as from coal-fired power plants like the two that Tampa Electric Co. operates in Hillsborough County -- boosts the amount of mercury present in bays, rivers and streams. Clouds carry it along like rain, sprinkling it into the waterways with every storm.

Humans become exposed to mercury by eating fish, because the mercury accumulates in fish tissues.

That's why, since 1989, Florida officials have issued a series of public health advisories warning about the potential risk from fish taken from various waterways.

But wording the warnings can be tricky, Henderson said, because "we don't want you to stop eating fish."

Seafood is important to a healthy diet, which means any warning about its consumption must be balanced with an encouragement to keep eating other fish.

Crafting a mercury advisory requires the collaboration of three state agencies, led by the Health Department. The St. Petersburg-based Florida Marine Research Institute, an arm of the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, collects and tests the fish for mercury. The state Department of Environmental Protection participates, too.

"It's important that we're all on the same page and have the correct data," Parezik said, acknowledging that the latest advisory has been in the works for "at least a year."

Actually, Henderson said, "I thought it would come out in July 2001."

But it was delayed, he said, because although the new warning would cover more species than the last one in 1997, state health officials wanted the warning to be simple and easy to understand.

The original recommendation from FMRI called for limiting consumption of cobia, little tunny, bluefish and crevalle jack. Limited consumption means women of child-bearing age and children younger than 10 should not eat more than 8 ounces of that type of fish in a month, and everyone else should not eat more than 8 ounces a week.

"These are what the raw numbers support," Henderson said.

Because of the delay in producing the new health advisory, Henderson said, FMRI scientists came up with data suggesting that another fish should be added to the limited consumption list: greater amberjack.

"Oh, that would be a shame," said Linda Labrador of Keegan's Sea Grill, an Indian Rocks Beach restaurant that sells a lot of amberjack. "People love it . . . It's such an awesome fish. It's mild, and you can do so many different things with it. And it's priced reasonably, not like grouper."

Labrador said she could not estimate how much amberjack the restaurant sells, but it's enough that "from a business end, we'd hate to have it happen."

Still, she said, if eating amberjack carries a risk of too much mercury, "people have a right to know that."

Other proposed changes in the statewide health advisory would warn against consuming any shark more than 43 inches long and recommend limiting consumption of sharks smaller than 43 inches and of spotted sea trout more than 20 inches long, Henderson said.

In addition, the proposed advisory recommends that in the Keys, people should limit consumption of snook, red drum and permit, and in the vicinity of Indian River Lagoon limit consumption of snowy grouper and blackfin tuna.

The other big change involves freshwater fish.

The last advisory gave a list of lakes and rivers where consumption of largemouth bass and other species should be limited.

The recommendation for the new advisory, Henderson said, calls for a warning that consumption of largemouth bass, gar and bowfin be limited throughout the state, unless it's from a particular area the state has declared safe.

The good thing about those freshwater fish, Henderson said, is that "none are high on anybody's food chain, except for subsistence anglers."

-- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.