Mercury, fish and you: What to do?

Want to see the law of unintended consequences in action? Watch this:

1. We know that mercury is a neurotoxin and a really bad thing to be ingesting (at any time, but especially when you're pregnant)



2. We know that coal burning plants deposit way more mercury into the environment than is good for anyone's health, and that people are consuming this stuff through their food, including - and maybe even especially - fish



3. Conclusion: Warn people not to eat too much fish

It was an advisory that was well-meaning and well-intentioned. But it turns out to have been a really bad idea. And now, a coalition of nutrition experts - including a few federal agencies - is challenging government warnings that pregnant women limit their fish consumption. "The intent of the FDA advisory was a good idea" agreed Roger B. Newman, MD, director of obstetrics at the Medical University of South Carolina and a spokesman for a group called the Maternal Nutrition Group. But then he added: "The unintended consequence has really been a major health issue."

Here's the problem: People listen in sound bytes. Mention mercury, neurotoxin and fish in the same sentence and people remember the three word take-away "fish is bad". And more than a few people - including pregnant women - are staying away from it in droves. But a powerful new study by Joseph R. Hibbeln, MD and his colleagues in the US and UK indicates that this is the exactly wrong strategy if you want your newborn to be smart and healthy.

After adjusting for over 25 different factors including social class and breastfeeding, Dr. Hibbeln's team found that children born to mothers who ate more seafood than the current US guidelines for pregnant/nursing women (12 ounces per week) had higher tests on fine motor, communication and social skills, showed better social behaviors and were less likely to have low verbal IQ scores at age 6.

In contrast, children of mothers who ate no fish were:

• 28% more likely to have poor communication skills at 18 months



• 35% more likely to have poor fine motor coordination at age 3 1/2 years



• 44 % more likely to have poor social behavior at age 7 years



• and 48% more likely to have a relatively low verbal IQ at age 8

Furthermore, Hibbeln's team recorded no evidence to lend support to the warnings of the US (fish and mercury) advisory that pregnant women should limit their seafood. Other studies - namely the famous Seychelles Study, which studied 700 children in the Seychelles Islands - have also found absolutely no evidence of damage to children whose mothers ate about 10 times as much fish as the average American, fish that were generally higher in mercury content to boot. (Let's also not forget that fish is high in selenium, which helps to chelate mercury in the first place).

Meanwhile, the benefits of fish eating are enormous, and many of these benefits are being lost to people who are being scared away from fish by the warnings. Eating fish lowers the risk of death from cardiovascular disease by 36% (according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in Oct. 2006), and omega-3's from fish are associated with improvements in behavior, cognition, heart health, brain health and mood.

The warning against pregnant women eating the four types of fish most contaminated - shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish - should stand. But let's remember that warning is for pregnant women and nursing mothers, and doesn't apply to the rest of the population. Plus let's also remember that the mean mercury concentration for fish like salmon, haddock, atlantic or pacific mackeral, sardines, scallops is generally less than 1/10th the amount found in the "big four". Plus you can avoid the whole issue by buying from reputable wild fisheries like Vital Choices, which is featured on my website.

Part of the problem with the advisory is in the language. The 2004 advisory from the EPA and the FDA suggests "limiting" fish to 12 ounces (about 2 meals) per week. Representatives of the Maternal Nutrition Group, as well as Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition are urging a minimum of 12 ounces a week. I agree totally. The change in emphasis could produce a health-boosting change in behavior. "There's always a benefit to women eating more than 12 ounces of fish per week," said Dr. Hibbeln.

Incidentally, no one is more anti-mercury than I am, and no one wants to see tighter regulations and a global initiative to cut down on emissions. But as a point of information, most of the methyl mercury in ocean waters comes from forest fires, undersea volcanoes and geothermal vents, not from coal burning power plants, though such plants do pollute nearby lakes and rivers, do increase our exposure to this neurotoxin, and do account for a very small portion of the methyl mercury in oceans.

Sure let's get rid of the mercury. But let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. And in this case, the example is more than a metaphor.