Sierra Club offering a $25.00 test kit to check for Mercury

[Guest guest]

Tuesday, July 5, 2005http://www.milforddailynews.com/health/view.bg?articleid=73769Contack newspaper: http://www.heraldinteractive.com/contactus/index.bgJacquie Kittler, of Natick, offered up her hair for a mercury test. (Allan Jung photo)Is eating fish really good for you?

 

 

 

More than 20 percent of Americans tested for mercury in a nationwide study have levels of the toxic metal exceeding a government advisory level, a finding that has led one researcher to declare the country faces an "unprecedented public health emergency."

 

 

 

High mercury exposure most frequently occurs in people with diets heavy in fish, a food that's often touted as healthful.

 

 

 

The study, which included several MetroWest residents and calculated mercury exposure using hair samples, found that about half of people who eat seven or more servings of fish per month have mercury levels exceeding the Environmental Protection Agency human health standard of 1 part per million. Having silver-colored dental fillings also increases mercury exposure, researchers found.

 

 

 

The EPA health standard was devised for children and women of childbearing age to protect fetuses from neurological damage, but researchers said anyone, including men, should be concerned about mercury levels that exceed the advisory level.

 

 

 

Researcher Richard Maas acknowledged the study's results may be skewed because the subjects volunteered themselves, so the findings were not based on a random sample. But a previous national survey found that 12 percent of women of childbearing age have mercury levels above the health standard, and Maas believes the two studies together show the country faces a large problem.

 

 

 

"Somewhere between 12 and 20 percent of the U.S. public have a documented exposure to a toxin above an official government standard," said Maas, co-director of the Environmental Quality Institute at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, which is conducting the mercury study. "If you look at it that way, this is an unprecedented public health emergency. Never before has there been a toxin to which the public was so ubiquitously exposed."

 

 

 

Maas' study, which includes more than 5,000 subjects so far, is the largest ever to document human exposure to mercury, he said.

 

 

 

Testing for mercury

 

 

 

Lisa Eck of Natick, a professor of English at Framingham State College who participated in the project, has decided to rethink her consumption of fish after receiving results she found disconcerting.

 

 

 

"I am disappointed because it's hard not to conceive of fish as a healthy food alternative," Eck said. "I think the chief reversal I have to think about is I've been proud of the fact I've convinced toddlers -- my twins -- to eat fish. I thought that was a great triumph as a parent. Now I have to do more research."

 

 

 

Eck's mercury level was .88 parts per million, just below the government health advisory. Maas said that's high enough to consider reducing fish consumption.

 

 

 

"That's getting up there," he said. "If I had a .88, in a couple months I would get another test done to see if it's going up or down. You are flirting closer to a level of concern."

 

 

 

Eck was one of three local residents who agreed to participate in the mercury project and be interviewed by the Daily News. The others -- Jacquie Kittler of Natick and Maureen Bligh of Millbury -- both had mercury levels well below Eck's. Kittler clocked in at .23 parts per million and Bligh, who is a paginator for Community Newspaper Co. (which includes the Daily News) in Framingham, had a level of .28.

 

 

 

Bligh, who recently gave birth to her son, Jason, and frequently ate fish while pregnant, was relieved to learn she is well below the level of concern.

 

 

 

"I actually thought they would be a little higher because I did eat kind of a lot of fish," she said.

 

 

 

Kittler, who has two young children, said she was careful to avoid fish during pregnancy.

 

 

 

"I didn't eat fish at all during my pregnancy. I was told not to," she said.

 

 

 

Source of the problem

 

 

 

Fish carry high levels of mercury largely because of emissions from coal-fired power plants. The biggest concern related to mercury exposure is neurologic damage it can cause developing fetuses. The EPA has said 1 in 6 women of childbearing age have enough mercury in their bodies to potentially impair an unborn child.

 

 

 

The agency issued new rules regulating mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants in March, but at least 11 states, including Massachusetts, sued the agency because they believe the rules aren't stringent enough.

 

 

 

The regulations are expected to cut emissions 70 percent by 2018, but represent a reversal from a Clinton-era decision that would have forced plants to install the "maximum achievable control technology" by 2008.

 

 

 

Most debate over mercury's health effects focuses on neurological disorders in children, but the metal is toxic to nearly every organ in the body, including those of adults, Maas said. And women aren't the only ones at risk: some studies indicate men with elevated mercury levels have increased risk of heart disease.

 

 

 

The EPA has advised women and young children to limit consumption of certain types of fish and to avoid ones with high levels of mercury, including shark, swordfish and king mackerel.

 

 

 

But the effects of mercury on adults is a subject of debate. Local doctors said they rarely see incidents of mercury poisoning.

 

 

 

"It's pretty rare. It's like lead poisoning. You've got to be looking for it," said Dr. Mark Lemons, head of Newton-Wellesley Hospital's emergency department.

 

 

 

Dr. Michael Shannon, a Children's Hospital Boston physician who is a senior toxicologist for the Massachusetts and Rhode Island poison control center, said he treats about one or two cases of mercury poisoning each year. Patients with high mercury exposures are treated with chelators, medication that binds to mercury and ejects it from the body in urine, he said.

 

 

 

"It's a little unusual to have someone whose degree of exposure is so astronomical that they need medication to get it out," Shannon said.

 

 

 

There is disagreement even among federal agencies about what level of mercury exposure is safe. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, thinks the 1 part per million level used by the EPA is too low to pose a threat to women and unborn children, said John Risher, a chemical manager for mercury at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a sister agency of the CDC.

 

 

 

"CDC would not consider it a level of concern, nor would the Department of Health and Human Services. It would just indicate there is some exposure," Risher said.

 

 

 

But Maas said some people are so sensitive to mercury's effects they can become sick at levels below the EPA standard.

 

 

 

"We're seeing more and more of those people because we have clinics all over the country filled with people who have been diagnosed with mercury poisoning," Maas said.

 

 

 

Maas also said the government uses economic feasibility studies to help determine acceptable risks to deadly toxins. But the typical person deciding what is healthy and what isn't shouldn't be concerned about the financial impact pollution controls would have on industry, he said.

 

 

 

The Environmental Quality Institute study, which is being cosponsored by Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, released its preliminary results last October, based on analyses of the first 1,449 hair samples.

 

 

 

Maas wasn't impressed by the government's response to the report.

 

 

 

"You would think the response would be an all-out effort to lower the sources of the mercury," he said. "Yet right after we published our preliminary study...the Bush administration's response was to go and weaken the clean air standards and actually roll back the controls that were supposed to go on power plants for controlling mercury."

 

 

 

Testing continues

 

 

 

Final results from the Environmental Quality Institute survey are expected to be released in September. People can still participate by logging onto www.sierraclub.org/mercury and ordering a testing kit for $25. The price is low compared to a mercury test's typical cost of $60 to $100, said Christina Kreitzer, a media coordinator for the Sierra Club in San Francisco.

 

 

 

The Sierra Club's goal is to spur legislative action and raise awareness of the dangers of mercury exposure, she said. Researchers aim to test at least 10,000 people.

 

 

 

"We wanted, first of all, to educate the public about the issue," she said. "Coal-fired power plants are releasing this toxin into our air, that rains down into the water and it starts accumulating in the fish we eat on the dinner table. A lot of people, especially women, aren't making the connection between eating the fish and polluting their bodies."*