Caution Essential for UNEP Coverage

Reporters covering the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) deliberations of an international mercury treaty, take note:

Efforts to safeguard the environment and the public health are laudable and necessary. But the negotiations often spawn emotional rhetoric, questionable research, and agenda-driven commentary on mercury in fish that risks drowning out ground truth science.

When writing about the environmental impact of mercury pollution, please consider:

– Mercury pollution emitted from coal-burning power plants is not the naturally occurring mercury found in all ocean species of fish. Resulting from volcanic activity along the seabed (which has been occurring for millions of years), commercially caught seafood has always contained minimal traces of mercury regardless of pollution levels. In fact,levels of mercury in commercial seafood are just as they were nearly 100 years ago.

– Mercury emissions do pollute lakes, streams, and rivers. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has jurisdiction over inland waterways, closely monitors mercury levels and advises recreational anglers on what is safe to consume. The vast majority of the seafood we eat comes from the ocean or fish farms and is, as noted above, largely unaffected by emissions.

– The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees the seafood we buy and order in restaurants (commercial seafood). It enforcesa mercury level of 1.0ppm, which has a built-in safety factor of 1000 percent.

If the media fails to communicate seafood nutrition clearly, correctly and objectively, detrimental health outcomes are likely. In fact, risk-based messages have been proven to reduce fish consumption resulting in an overall reduction in the potential health benefits derived from the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish.

– Low seafood consumption is the second-biggest dietary contributor to preventable deaths in the U.S., taking 84,000 lives each year (for perspective, low intake of fruits and vegetables takes 58,000 lives each year)

– The North American diet contains the second-lowest percentage of fish in the world (7.0%) second only to Sudan while the 2010 Dietary Guidelines recommend 20% of the protein we eat should be seafood.

Therefore, we caution reporters to distinguish hyperbole from scientific fact; opinion from peer-reviewed research; and activists like the Zero Mercury Working Group and the Mercury Policy Project from credentialed scientists, researchers and doctors.

Please consider the National Fisheries Institute as a resource. Together, we can help ensure that the public health is not jeopardized by misleading or confusing information.

Contact Information

Gavin Gibbons
(703) 752-8891
ggibbons@nfi.org