Mercury in Fish 1.45 Mb - Arnika

Page 17 Mercury Policy Project
Mercury in Fish
with the US conditions that produced cases
of methylmercury poisoning.
increased steadily for the past decade or so,
but is still low by international standards, at
7.5 kg per capita per year, or on average only
144 grams per week. 36
roughly the same as in the US in some
countries, to two or three times higher in other
countries (as discussed above). Per capita
consumption in the Philippines is 31 kg/year,
survey of Kolkata consumers (cited earlier),
found a median intake of 700 g/week, or 36
kg/year.
In general, the likelihood of excessive
methylmercury exposure and associated risk
of adverse health effects increase with average
average consumption. As the total number of
the absolute number of events involving
consumed. And among people who eat greater
eat the higher-mercury predatory species are
more likely to consume larger quantities of
The risk from methylmercury is therefore
probably greater, and affects more consumers,
in some European countries, in India, and in
the Philippines than it is in the US, in two
respects. First, consumers who prefer to
higher. Second, a far larger fraction of the
population in parts of the EU and in Asia has
week, compared to the US. For people who
to exceed reference levels.
Put another way, for people who eat large
that should trigger concerns about potentially
excessive exposure are correspondingly
intake for half the population exceeds 500
1.0 mg/kg or 0.5 mg/kg of mercury need to
be on the “watch list,” but additional varieties
do as well, those with, say, more than 0.25
mg/kg. The math is inexorable: A person who
gets the same mercury dose as someone who
eats 600 grams containing 0.50 mg/kg, or 300
grams containing 1.0 mg/kg. And in each of
these cases the dose ingested by a person of
average weight will exceed all reference levels
by a wide margin.
If public health monitoring studies were
conducted with appropriately sensitive health
assays in each country covered by this report,
we would therefore expect to see patterns
of excessive exposure, broad risks of subclinical
toxic effects, and occasional cases of
clinical methylmercury poisoning, in all the
countries. How prevalent these effects are can