Mercury Contamination, Exposures and Risk:A New Global Picture Emerges
Zero Mercury Working group, December 2012
Mercury is a well-known and dangerous toxic pollutant that contaminates fish around the world. There has been a 3-fold increase in mercury since preindustrial times and a recent study indicates that mercury accumulation in the oceans correlates with the rising tide of mercury pollution. Mercury has no respect for national or regional boundaries. It can travel long distances through the atmosphere and deposit far from its original source, where bacteria absorb it and convert it to a very toxic form, methylmercury, which works its way up the food chain into humans.
Until now, there has not been a comprehensive, global picture of mercury levels in seafood. The renowned research group, Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI), has closed this gap by creating a new extensive global data base on mercury in fish and other marine life. In their new report, entitled Mercury in the Global Environment: Patterns of Global Seafood Mercury Concentrations and their Relationship with Human Health, BRI uses the data base to describe the worldwide extent of mercury contamination, based on thousands of scientific reports collected from around the globe. Importantly, the report also identifies which types of seafood and other marine life have relatively high concentrations of mercury - critical knowledge when trying to reduce mercury exposures and risks for those who eat seafood.
To complement the fish contamination data from BRI, the Zero Mercury Working Group (ZMWG) commissioned a report entitled An Overview of Epidemiological Evidence on the Effects of Methylmercury on Brain Development, and a Rationale for a Lower Definition of Tolerable Exposure. This report examines the most recent health studies on mercury and finds that the current health benchmarks for mercury levels in fish are outdated and inadequate. Taken together, these two new reports suggest that not only is mercury contamination widespread, but the levels in fish are of greater concern than previously imagined.
