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FDA Mercury Warnings Inadequate

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Although the Food and Drug Administration's January 2001 warning about the dangers of pregnant women dining on mercury contaminated fish is a step in the right direction it's not enough, according to a new report released by the Environmental Working Group. The EWG's report, Brain Food, reports that the FDA warned that pregnant women should not eat any any shark, swordfish, tulefish, or king mackerel because doing so leaves fetuses vulnerable to toxic methylmercury which, because of mercury from coal burning power plants, contaminates numerous fish species. Methylmercury can cross the placenta and cause learning deficits and developmental delays in children who are exposed even to relatively low levels in the womb. The principal exposure route for the fetus is fish consumption by the mother. After suggesting not eating the four off limits species FDA then recommends 12 ounces per week of any other fish. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which makes recommendations to states about safe mercury levels in sport fish, allows up to 8 ounces of any fish per week for pregnant women with no prohibitions on consumption of any individual species of fish caught. FDA follows those guidelings. After looking at extensive data on methylmercury contamination of fish EWG's Brain Food report calls the two agencies to task. "FDA's methylmercury safeguards are designed to protect an average-sized woman eating an average fish contaminated with an average amount of methylmercury that decays in her body at an average rate. These assumptions rarely apply to the risks faced by any individual. Instead, risks are unevenly distributed throughout the population, with a small but significant number of pregnancies exposed to far higher and potentially unsafe levels of methylmercury than the average fetus. The 10 percent most-heavily exposed American women already have blood methylmercury levels that would increase health risks to their fetuses if they became pregnant (CDC 2001). FDA's health advisory, based on average exposures, does little to protect these children," the report asserts. "[I]f American women ate a varied diet of FDA's recommended 12 ounces of fish a week (and none of the four prohibited fish) they would expose more than one-fourth of all babies born each year (1 million infants) to a potentially harmful dose of methylmercury for at least one month during pregnancy. About 20,000 of these children would be exposed to a dose of methylmercury that increases the risk of adverse neurological effects for the entire pregnancy," the report continues.