Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Sandman
Frankly, I would worry more about feeding chicken to my kids than fish.
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You want to be careful here, particularly if you eat fish caught offshore (tuna/sword). I know of two fishermen in Falmouth (one a physician) who developed mercury poisoning from eating fish caught on canyon runs.
An issue also exists for those who eat plenty of inshore fish.
The problem is that federal guidelines are based on AVERAGE toxin levels in fish. The limited data I have seen for individual fish (striped bass) shows that some fish have nearly none, and some fish have 10-12X the average.
A normal consumer would buy small servings of different fish on multiple occasions and hence be exposed to the average toxin level in that species'.
A fisherman, however, might come home with one bass or more likely a tuna that is loaded with toxin, then eat (and feed his family) multiple meals from the same fish. His toxin exposure ends up much higher since all his fish meals are coming from the same high toxin level fish. The odds of this happening are probably not very small. In the striped bass study I saw, 2 or 3 fish in a small sample of about a dozen had toxin levels several times higher than the average.
Catching a big fish, freezing it, and eating multiple meals from it (particularly if you have children or a pregnant wife) is a gamble each time you do it, plain and simple. Do it multiple times a season and your chance of losing is real.
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