Japan's whale meat exceeds mercury density safety limits

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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20030423b8.htm

 

Japan's whale meat exceeds mercury density safety

limits

 

Mercury levels in whales caught in Japan's coastal

waters increase the further south the creatures are

caught, with one specimen from Okinawa's Nago

registering a mercury density more than 57 times the

nation's provisional safety limit, according to a

group of experts.

 

Group member Tetsuya Endo, a lecturer at the Health

Sciences University of Hokkaido, said that mercury

dissolved in seawater may have accumulated in fish and

other whale prey along the Black Current, which flows

north toward Japan's Pacific coast from east of the

Philippines.

 

The mercury may stem from industrial pollution in

Japan and Southeast Asia, as well as from natural

sources such as undersea volcanic activity, Endo said.

 

The group said it will present its findings at a May

meeting of the Food Hygiene Society of Japan in Tokyo.

Efforts to gain a comprehensive understanding of the

problem are only in their infancy as there is no

comprehensive data on mercury density in the sea.

 

The researchers analyzed mercury density in 83 slices

of red meat obtained from different kinds of whales,

bought from six regions stretching from Abashiri in

Hokkaido to Nago between 2000 and 2002.

 

Every slice exceeded Japan's provisional limit on the

maximum density of mercury, which stands at 0.4 parts

per million. In Nago, researchers identified an

average mercury density of 11.6 ppm.

 

This was followed by Taiji in Wakayama Prefecture, at

9.8 ppm.

 

By the time the group worked its way up to Abashiri,

which faces the Sea of Okhotsk, the average mercury

density had fallen to 0.8 ppm, still double the

acceptable limit.

 

One slice of whale meat in Nago had a mercury density

of 23.1 ppm, the highest level recorded by the group.

 

The researchers also looked specifically into methyl

mercury, which damages the nervous system and was

responsible for causing Minamata disease in the 1950s

and 1960s. The highest level was identified in whale

meat from Taiji, at 10.6 ppm, more than 35 times the

methyl mercury limit of 0.3 ppm.

 

The Japan Times: April 23, 2003

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