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FDA Urged to Crack Down on Tuna Mercury Levels"Time to Stop Protecting Fishermen's Profits, Start Protecting Children" |
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By Mark Huffman August 2, 2005
"FDA's own food safety committee recommended that the Agency revise its advisory, but FDA has failed to act because of undue influence by industry," said Bender. "FDA should stop protecting the fishing industry's profits and start protecting children." Methylmercury -- the organic form mercury assumes in fish -- is a potent neurotoxin that poses the greatest risk to the developing fetus, infants, and young children. The latest data from the CDC indicates that 5.6 percent of women of childbearing age in the U.S. have unsafe mercury levels that may place the developing fetus at risk. Canned tuna is consumed in 90 percent of American households and accounts for over 20 percent of US seafood consumption. What should consumers know when they head down the tuna aisle at the supermarket? “They need to know that white tuna has between three to five times as much mercury, on average, as the light can tuna,” Bender told ConsumerAffairs.com. “This has been demonstrated, not only by the testing that we’ve done, at Consumers Union, but also the testing that FDA did.” "Pregnant women and young children should be advised to avoid consuming albacore white tuna, as the Rhode Island Department of Health recommends," Bender added. Albacore accounts for about one-third of all canned tuna sold in the U.S. The independent testing found that mercury levels in white canned tuna averaged over 0.5 ppm. How much fish a person can eat before exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) "virtual safe limit," called a reference dose (RfD), depends on body weight and mercury content of the fish. For example:
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