Blue Water Fishermen's Association claims people shouldn't worry about mercury contamination in seafood

The Blue Water Fishermen's Association has issued a press release stating that it's perfectly fine if sushi and other seafood contains high levels of mercury. Yes, that's what they're saying. Tuna, salmon, shellfish, and just about every other edible marine animal that isn't farm-raised can contain high levels of mercury in them, but the fishermen are telling you not to worry about it.

Over the last several years it's been established that the trace element selenium, found in all marine fish, prevents and reverses adverse effects of mercury exposure. According to Nick Ralston, University of North Dakota expert on selenium/mercury interactions, the extremely high binding affinity between selenium and mercury is a fundamental feature of selenium's protective effect against mercury.

Here's the problem, fish accumulate mercury in their bodies just like humans do. Oceana recently conducted a study (pdf) that found tuna and swordfish from around the country had higher levels of mercury than the FDA's own data suggests.

So we've got higher levels of mercury than the FDA tells us, and this group of fishermen, who understandably want to protect their livelihoods, is telling us that because fish contain trace amounts of selenium, we shouldn't worry about it, that it's safe to eat. Unless those trace amounts of selenium can bind to large amounts of mercury, the math doesn't add up.

The Associated Press has recently conducted a five month survey of our nation's water systems, with some very unnerving results. Normally, people don't think about the water that comes out of their faucets unless it's off-color or smells or tastes funny. But then along comes an enterprising group of journalists and they make us all stop and think about what it is we're taking into our bodies, and worse, giving to our children. In this case, it's prescription medications. Everything from Tylenol to sex hormones.

A vast array of pharmaceuticals -- including antibiotics,
anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones -- have been found
in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an
Associated Press investigation shows.

I'm usually not the kind of person who gets overly worked up when I hear about minor contamination. I don't like it, but I don't let it scare me like, say, a bomb under my house would. But this... this scares me.

We've known the dangers of heavy metal contamination in our water supplies for years, and we've developed filtration systems to deal with that threat. Municipal water systems generally test for and filter heavy metals, and if we're still not comfortable with the level of mercury or lead in our water we can purchase our own filtration systems and install them in our homes.

That's not the case with prescription medications. The chemical makeup of the medications found in our water makes it much more difficult to screen for and filter out the contaminants. We don't really have a defense against ingesting this stuff, especially when you consider how much of our water supply may be contaminated.