Majority US Consumers Do Not Undestand USFDA Mercury Advisoryff

The federal government’s 2004 warning about the dangers of mercury in seafood took a big bite out of the tuna industry. Sales dropped by 10 percent after the advisory, according to the U.S. Tuna Foundation, and haven’t recovered since.

The warning, the seafood industry protested, was only for pregnant women, nursing mothers and very young children, and only regarded eating seafood in excess — why did it take such a toll on Americans’ seafood consumption?

The University of Maryland’s new Center for Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Policy thinks it has the answer.

Americans are confused about the advisory, and about the dangers of mercury and benefits of eating seafood, according to a study the center released earlier this month.

The vast majority of those surveyed were wrong about who the FDA advisory applied to — 45 percent believed it was the elderly, 35 percent said teens and 29 percent chose men. One-third of the 1,040 study subjects believed the advisory applied to all Americans.

“That’s a big ‘oops,’” said nutritionist Maureen Storey, the center’s director. “There’s a disconnect here.”

In an effort to correct the misconceptions, the center, formed to study controversial issues of health and nutrition, has launched an informational Web site designed to bring to the consumer level the often technical topic of mercury.

The Web site, www.realmercuryfacts.org, reports the results of the study and offers the public information derived from peer-reviewed literature, reworked to exclude technical language and appeal to the general consumer. The type of mercury found in water is methylmercury, which binds to proteins and accumulates in fish, more highly in freshwater fish, according to the Web site. In high levels, it is poisonous to humans. The site is the first ever for the center, which usually publishes its findings in scientific journals. The mercury site marks the first time the center has targeted the general public with its findings.

”This is a different population because of how much confusion there seems to be, the benefits that people may not be getting because they’re concerned,” Storey explained. “People have heard some bad things that I think need to be corrected because of the potential health benefits of fish.”

The FDA also has addressed those health benefits. In fact, the agency does so in the first paragraph of the March 19, 2004, advisory regarding the dangers of mercury. Fish, the advisory reads, “contain high-quality protein and other essential nutrients, are low in saturated fat, and contain omega-3 fatty acids,” shown to promote cardiovascular health.

“Women and young children,” it continues, “in particular should include fish or shellfish in their diets.”

But, according to tuna foundation spokeswoman Nancy Glick, the public didn’t hear that. “The next day, [the headline] says the government advises not to eat tuna,” she said. “It’s a challenge — once it gets out there, it sort of becomes very hard to get it back.”

Then there are the environmental groups. Many of them oppose the FDA advisory as well — but they say the guidelines are too lax.

The agency advocated for pregnant women up to 12 ounces per week of fish that is low in mercury, including shrimp, canned light tuna and salmon, and up to six ounces per week of fish higher in mercury, including albacore, or locally caught fish.

That’s too much, according to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based research and advocacy group that this past March appealed the FDA’s decision, demanding stricter guidelines.

The guidelines would cause 74 percent of American women to exceed the safe level of mercury in their blood, according to the environmental organization. In the United States each year, the group says, 630,000 babies are born with unsafe levels of mercury in their blood.

But last November, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control published a study finding that in the blood of 3,600 women of childbearing age and 1,500 children ages one to five, the mercury levels were significantly below risk.

The environmental groups’ numbers are skewed, said Glick of the tuna foundation, which consists of industry leaders StarKist Foods, Bumble Bee Seafood and Chicken of the Sea International. The industry group has devoted itself to getting its message out, and the University of Maryland’s new Web site — set to be updated every month as new journal articles hit the books — is a blessing. “We have been trying to be very proactive in educating the public on a number of fronts, to communicate what the advisory did say and what it didn’t,” she said. “We are delighted that there is a credible resource that the public and particularly the media can go to that is going to not slant the information one way or another.”

The center’s study, funded by about $40,000 from the tuna foundation, found that Americans are acting on their fear of mercury in seafood. Two-thirds of those surveyed remembered hearing something negative about eating fish in the past year.

And one-third of survey respondents responsible for feeding young children said they have changed the amount of seafood they feed the children in the past year. Eleven percent are feeding them less.

Just one-third of the study participants said they eat fish once a week or more.

Storey, whose center aims to determine the facts on controversial health topics and disseminate that information, said the study’s results are disturbing given the reported health benefits of eating fish. “We’re losing this nutrient, this wonderful source of protein,” she said.

The center, which moved with its six researchers to the University of Maryland from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in August, is anxious to gauge the response to its first foray into reaching the general public.

More projects may soon follow, as the center continues to study health issues like obesity.

“It will be interesting to see what kind of feedback we get from the Web site,” Storey said. “We’re very pleased with it.”