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"Are the dangers of mercury in seafood overblown or are they taken seriously enough? An environmental group recently tested seafood sold in grocery stores and sushi joints in California and said not only are the levels of mercury higher than expected, but businesses aren&amp;#039;t warning their customers about the potential dangers. Gotmercury.org, a pu   blic health advocacy group based in San Francisco and affiliated with the larger Turtle Island Restoration Network, secretly tested tuna and swordfish at locations around the state and found mercury levels higher than federal levels permit. That mercury was found at all isn&amp;#039;t surprising, reported San Francisco Chronicle, because mercury appears naturally, anyway, and is one of the unfortunate byproducts of mining and some energy production. What was surprising, however, were the levels the researchers found. Eighty-one percent of the swordfish tested had mercury levels &amp;quot;well above&amp;quot; the permissible levels set by the Food and Drug Administration, according to Gotmercury&amp;#039;s web site. That&amp;#039;s even higher the recommended levels established by the Environmental Protection Agency, whose figures are about half what the FDA permits.  &amp;quot;Methylmercury - the type that becomes concentrated in fish tissue - averaged 1.47 parts per million for swordfish in the GotMercury.org study,&amp;quot; reported the Chronicle last week, &amp;quot;compared with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration&amp;#039;s average mercury level of just under 1 part per million. In fresh tuna, the report found an average 0.407 parts per million versus the FDA&amp;#039;s average 0.325 parts per million.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s hard to avoid mercury in seafood although Gotmercury does offer a calculator and a link to a list of varieties of seafood that can help seafood enthusiasts avoid species with higher levels of contamination. Generally, the lower on the food chain the fish lives, the less mercury it contains since it isn&amp;#039;t eating other mercury-contaminated species itself.  Furthermore, none of the restaurants tested, and only half the grocery stores, had posted any warnings about the presence of mercury in their seafood. On the other hand, most aren&amp;#039;t required to do so, at least not by the feds. One of Gotmercury&amp;#039;s aims is to require labeling that would identify species at higher risk of mercury contamination.  Critics at the National Fisheries Institute, which represents many seafood producers and lobbies on their behalf, cried foul in a smarmy blog post at their web site. &amp;quot;Here&amp;#039;s how GotMercury? hopes the story will play out,&amp;quot; read the post. &amp;quot;The group approaches a journalist and claims to have tested seafood and found that for certain samples the mercury levels were above federal averages and others exceeded the FDA&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;action level&amp;#039; of 1 part per million (ppm.) With this information the group then suggests this is evidence of a public health crisis.&amp;quot; And you? Are you concerned about mercury levels in seafood but confused about what is safe to eat? Have you limited the amount of fish you eat or do you only buy seafood you know to be low in mercury? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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