I was listening to an interesting piece on Mercury’s history in the San Francisco Bay this past two weeks, courtesy of our friends over at KQED QUEST.

It’s an excellent 3 part series, focusing on how the problem has evolved and what lies ahead. One of the more interesting pieces is a short conversation with Dr. Jane Hightower, a doctor in San Francisco who specializes in diagnosing mercury poisoning cases. She published a paper in 2003 that garnered a lot of attention. She gathered a group of 89 individuals who had high fish consumption diets and measured their mercury levels over the course of a year. 89% had levels higher than the EPA reference dose (their guidelines) at 0.1 micrograms/kg of body weight. This study raised quite an alarm about mercury in fish, even though it did not yet indicate the symptomatic effects of mercury.

Back to the story at hand, QUEST interviewed her about Mercury poisoning. Listen to the story.

She admits that more study is needed in the area, but there is much difficulty in getting the study done (Hg is so toxic, it’s hard to get a study of humans approved, also Hg symptoms seem to be very different in different people).

After listening the story, I googled Dr. Hightower. I found an interesting site called MercuryFacts.org. The site essentially slams Dr. Hightower’s work (among others). After some digging, I found this site was established by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit devoted to “defending the right of adults and parents to choose what they eat, drink, and how they enjoy themselves.” I personally found the site slanderous bordering on malicious. Their Hg calculator uses a toxicity figure 10 times lower than the EPA’s (they don’t use the Reference dose as the EPA does, instead they take away the built in EPA buffer for their calculator). It’s highly misleading. Here’s a short video they ran against PETA “they want us to all be vegetarians”.

I would suggest looking to Real Mercury Facts, a site run by the University of Maryland, for a little less biased view.

More Info:
Oceana Report on Hg Testing of Fish in Grocery Stores
Center for Consumer Freedom
EPA Guidelines on Hg