Study: 1 in 5 has high mercury

Is the illuminati is silently poisoning us?

Too bad i can't stop breathing, maybe i should get oxygen tank, as alot of it seems to be in the air as well. See power plant pollution map. Click on the state to see local power plants. Maybe i should move the a different area. It's scary. Sometimes it feels like we are living in our own waste.

I have stopped recently.. stopped eating fish. Do you still consider it safe?

Twenty percent of 1,449 hair samples analyzed by UNCA's Environmental Quality Institute had more mercury than the government says is safe for children and women of child-bearing age. Eight of the 36 N.C. samples and two of the four S.C. samples contained mercury above the safety threshold.

The environmental group Greenpeace paid for the study.

Mercury, which is toxic, accumulates in fish. Hair samples indicate how much of it is present in the people who eat them.

The highest mercury levels were found in people who eat the most canned tuna, fish from stores or restaurants and locally caught fish.

"There's obviously a serious public health problem here," said Richard Maas, who reported the findings with his co-director of the UNCA institute, Steven Patch. "The more fish you eat, the more risk you run of being exposed to unsafe levels of mercury."

Greenpeace used the findings to criticize President Bush's proposal to control mercury from coal-fired power plants. Those plants emit about 40 percent of the mercury U.S. industries release.

The administration expects to complete a rule in March that it says would eventually reduce mercury emissions by 70 percent. Greenpeace and other environmental groups say emission cuts of up to 90 percent are feasible years sooner.

Eating Fish?

The EPA advises children and women who are pregnant, may become pregnant or are nursing not to eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel or tilefish. Those people should eat two meals a week of seafood low in mercury, such as shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock and catfish.

North Carolina, in addition, advises women of child-bearing age and children not to eat bowfin, largemouth bass and chain pickerel caught south and east of Interstate 85.

S.C. advisories are similar for lakes, rivers and ponds listed at www.scdhec.net/ eqc/admin/html/ fishadv.html.

Greenpeace offers $25 home hair-sampling kits at www.greenpeaceusa.org/mercury

source



[edit on 23-10-2004 by psilocin]