State Says it Will Sample Blue Marlin Jerky
The state health department will test samples of Pacific blue marlin fish jerky after a published last week in the found that mercury levels in Hawaii jerky were five to 28 times federal recommended limits.
High mercury levels in fish have been associated with brain damage in developing fetuses and young children.
While the state said there may be a risk, it also disparaged the findings of the study, which was authored by Jane Hightower, a California physician known for her work on the health threats of mercury in fish.
鈥淭he Hightower paper overestimates the risk from eating marlin jerky because the authors used measurements for total mercury and not [methylmercury],鈥 according to a statement from Peter Oshiro, environmental health program manager at the Hawaii Department of Health.
Methylmercury is toxic but other forms of mercury are less so, according to Barbara Brooks, the state toxicologist.
While Civil Beat reported earlier this week that environmental health experts say mercury found in fish is usually methylmercury, the state health department says that’s not the case for blue marlin, based on studies conducted a decade ago.
Brooks said that those studies, which tested fresh blue marlin and not jerky, found the mercury in the marlin to be mainly safe. Less than half was methyl mercury.
Hightower鈥檚 study suggests that mercury levels can be much higher in dried jerky, because the mercury becomes more concentrated.
Hightower told Civil Beat earlier this week that testing for methylmercury was seldom done anymore since most of the mercury in fish is methylmercury, a point corroborated by Dr. Philippe Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health. She also said that other types of mercury had not been found to be 鈥渉ealthful or without adverse effects,鈥 and that levels of methylmercury can vary between fish of the same species.
Brooks did not immediately respond to a question about how many samples were tested in 2002.
Even though the state health department says Hightower’s findings are flawed, in 2003 it released a brochure that said pregnant women and children should not eat any Pacific blue marlin. The advisory was based on the 2002 study, though Brooks said that the recommendation was highly conservative and that it was issued to be on the safe side even though they knew that most of the mercury found in marlin was in a 鈥渓ess toxic form.鈥
Oshiro said that the state health department had conducted extensive outreach efforts to educate physicians and pregnant women about the risk from eating fish with elevated levels of mercury.
He also said that despite the planned testing of marlin jerky, the health department was not suggesting residents shouldn鈥檛 eat fish generally.
鈥淟astly, DOH is NOT advocating that you should stop eating fish, but to the contrary, fish is a good food and part of a healthy diet,鈥 wrote Oshiro by email.
DISCUSSION: Do you think it’s important for the state to test marlin jerky or do you think that warnings are overblown?*
The state health department publishes this brochure, advising pregnant and breastfeeding women, and young children, not to eat any Pacific blue marlin.
