View Single Post
  #1  
Old December 11th 03, 12:24 PM
Elana Kehoe
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Pregnant, Nursing mothers should limit intake of tuna

From
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...language=print
er

Federal Warning On Tuna Planned
Mercury a Danger To Fetuses, Children

By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A01

The federal government plans to warn pregnant women, nursing mothers and
even those thinking of getting pregnant to limit their consumption of
tuna as part of a broad advisory concerning the dangers of eating fish
and shellfish with elevated levels of harmful mercury.

A draft advisory from the Food and Drug Administration and the
Environmental Protection Agency cautions women of childbearing age as
well as young children to limit their intake of tuna and other fish and
shellfish to 12 ounces a week, the equivalent of two to three modest
meals. Among seafood, tuna ranks second only to shrimp in popularity in
the United States.

The government is also advising consumers to mix the types of fish they
eat and not to eat any one kind of fish or shellfish more than once a
week. The FDA had previously warned pregnant women against eating shark,
swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish because they contain unusually
high levels of mercury, but until now the agency has not directly
addressed concerns about tuna or issued warnings for so large a segment
of the population.

The advisory notes that mercury levels in tuna vary, and that tuna
steaks and canned albacore tuna generally contain higher levels of
mercury than canned light tuna. The document advises pregnant and
nursing women: "You can safely include tuna as part of your weekly fish
consumption."

But David Acheson, the FDA's medical officer in charge of the issue,
said in an interview that it is implicit in the draft document that
women at risk should eat no more than four to six ounces of tuna once a
week.

David Burney, executive director of the San Diego-based U.S. Tuna
Foundation, said that the industry agrees there is a need to expand the
government advisory to include tuna, but that manufacturers fear that
environmental and consumer groups will exploit fears to unnecessarily
harm the industry.

"Every time there's a hearing or a meeting, you get all these incredible
accusations flying everywhere, where you have people saying they know
people who ate fish who glow in the dark," Burney said. "That's the kind
of thing you don't like to see, and you wonder whether people are taking
this to heart."

StarKist, Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea, the three principal U.S.
tuna manufacturers, sold about 2.3 billion six-ounce cans of tuna last
year. But retail sales have dropped by about 10 percent in the United
States in the past decade, to about $1.1 billion a year, in part because
of public concern about the effects of mercury, according to industry
figures and media reports. Last year, shrimp for the first time overtook
tuna in overall sales.

Women between 18 and 54 typically make 85 percent of tuna purchases at
supermarkets, according to industry figures. More than 80 percent of all
tuna sold is used at lunch in various salads.

The proposed new guidelines began circulating yesterday at a meeting in
Washington of the FDA's Food Advisory Committee and likely will be
formally promulgated early next year, according to FDA officials. The
advisory is the government's response to mounting public concern about
the dangers of mercury pollution in tuna and other popular fish and
shellfish.

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that, like lead, can damage the brains
and nervous systems of fetuses and young children. Exposure to it from
eating contaminated fish can lead to a number of neurological problems,
including learning and attention disabilities and mental retardation.

Consumer and environmental groups have long complained that the FDA has
been slow to respond to the problem of mercury in tuna. Last year, the
advisory committee recommended that the FDA warn pregnant women and
young children to limit tuna in their diet and offer educational
material about which fish are high or low in mercury.

Goulda Downer, a Washington nutritionist and a member of the FDA
advisory committee, said many of her patients are greatly confused about
the risks of eating tuna and other fish caught in the ocean or in inland
waters.

"People are just so scared," she said. The EPA and the FDA last fall
launched a joint effort to draft a new fish-consumption advisory, based
on the most recent research on mercury contamination of fish. Officials
also conducted focus groups in major cities throughout the country in an
effort to come up with the clearest and most helpful wording for the
advisory.

Sanford Miller, chairman of the advisory panel, said: "The mere fact
that the FDA and the EPA have seriously come together to try to resolve
the issue is a good sign in itself."

Miller, a senior fellow at Virginia Tech's Center for Food and Nutrition
Policy, said it is "not an easy thing" for the government to caution
women about the potential dangers of mercury-laden fish without totally
discouraging them from eating a nutritious food.

But some environmentalists charged that the draft advisory is still far
too weak and fails to adequately warn women of the high risks of eating
even small amounts of tuna and other fish during their pregnancies.

"In fact, FDA encourages women to continue to eat types of seafood high
in mercury and that would put a woman's baby at risk for neurological
damage," said Jane Houlihan, vice president for research at the
Environmental Working Group.

Recent FDA testing indicated that canned albacore, known as white tuna,
contains almost three times as much mercury as canned light tuna.

This means that a single six-ounce can of albacore a week could put many
women, depending on their size, over the government's safe mercury
limit, according to Houlihan's group.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

--
It's Tis Herself