Reports are percolating today about an EPA study that found fish caught near wastewater treatment plants had residues of pharmaceuticals in them, including medicines used to treat high cholesterol, allergies, high blood pressure, bipolar disorder and depression.

REPORTERS TAKE NOTE- this story is not associated with commercial seafood in anyway. This is part of the EPA’s National Rivers and Stream Assessment.Generally speaking commercial seafood comes from the oceans. Headlines that suggest the fresh seafood available in your grocery store or in the canned tuna aisle are in anyway related to this study are erroneous.

No doubt– it’s a sexier story to suggest filets filled with pharmaceuticals are swimming across dinner plates from Miami to Minnesota but the fact is they are not… so don’t report that.

As an aside, the associated press has already taken the wind out of some sales– reporting “A person would have to eat hundreds of thousands of fish dinners to get even a single therapeutic dose.” That would be hundreds of thousands of fish dinners eaten by sportsmen who went fishing in streams near wastewater treatment plants.

What’s more, attempts to tie this story to mercury in seafood are also misguided. Mercury pollution does make its way to rivers and streams and into those “sport caught” fish I mentioned. But the trace amounts of methylmercury found in commercial seafood is naturally occurring. In fact for the second time in three years a California court made that abundantly clear just two weeks ago when it ruled in no uncertain terms that the evidence proved “methylmercury in tuna is naturally occurring.”

Don’t get caught up in hype and hyperbole, just stick to the facts.