Here’s an interesting story that’s bound to be distorted and eventually find its way into activist propaganda. It comes to us from South Carolina where the Herald reports that health officials there are planning to check people for mercury contamination.

Oh happy day for environmental activists, time to rev up ye ole’ mercury propaganda machine. Perhaps this is evidence that officials in the Palmetto State fear folks there are being poisoned by the fish they buy in the local grocery store?

WRONG!

This is a study designed to check people for mercury who have been eating fish they themselves plucked from local rivers and ponds- that’s sport fishing not commercial fishing. Regardless of how activists spin this and other studies it has simply no relation to the healthy fish you find in the grocery store.

South Carolina’s Post and Courier back in October of 2007 reported that the state’s rivers and lakes had high levels of mercury and that health officials have warned for years about the contamination and cautioned people not to eat certain fish. The Department of Health and Environmental Control even issued warnings about contamination in 1,747 miles of rivers. The article even says, “according to some studies (South Carolina) has one of the worst mercury hotspot problems in the nation.”

So, there you have it. A known problem that relates only to sport fishing and notcommercial seafood is being researched in South Carolina-those are the facts. Watch for the spin and note the date of this blog. I get the sense I will be referring to it in the future.