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 Women and children ought to be able to eat a fish without worrying about which brain toxin or cancer-causing chemical lies within. While women need to eat smart to lower their babies' risk from mercury and PCBs today, we also need to work towards public policies to make sure that cleaner fish in the future make these kinds of concerns a thing of the past. PCBs: Because scientists found PCBs to be highly toxic and persistent in the environment, the U.S. banned them from production in 1979. Since that time, PCB levels in fish and breast milk have declined [12, 13], Mercury: Although mercury persists somewhat less than PCBs in the human body, it is more of a problem because new mercury continues to be emitted to the environment. Major sources are: coal-fired power plants, taconite processing and mercury-containing products. Coal fired power plants alone emitted 48 tons of mercury in the U.S. in 1999 [14] and account for 46 percent of Minnesota's mercury emissions [15]. A little mercury creates a lot of pollution. Virtually all the mercury in our lakes comes from air deposition—accounting for about one gram (1/70th of a teaspoon) of mercury per 20-acre lake each year. Over time, this tiny amount can pollute the fish in that lake, rendering many of them unfit to eat on a regular basis [16]. |
