In Harm’s Way. Toxic Threats to Child Development.

The White Paper:

T. Schettler, J. Stern, F. Reich, M. Valenti, and D. Wallinga. Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility (GBPSR). 139 pp. 2000. http://psr.igc.org/ihw-project.htm

Review This White Paper’s Executive Summary:
http://psr.igc.org/ihw-project.htm

The Purpose of this White Paper:
This white paper discusses whether U.S. children who eat fish are at risk from methylmercury. This white paper also examines several potential exposures to harmful chemicals by U.S. children.

Some Background, Methods, Results, Caveats, and Other Select Points:

• This is not a peer-reviewed, scientific paper.
• This white paper was first publicly distributed in 2000.
• The Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility (GBPSR) is an activist group.
• There are three, historical, large unborn child exposures to methylmercury that caused some mental retardation, some troubled walking movements, and some visual disturbances. Both methylmercury exposures number one and number two happened to Japanese fishing villagers who for years ate large quantities of locally caught ocean fish that contained very high levels of methylmercury. These very high methylmercury levels in these ocean fish happened because these particular fish lived and fed in ocean waters that were heavily contaminated by large-scale, local, industrial mercury pollution. Methylmercury exposure number three happened to rural Iraqi villagers who for some time ate large quantities of bread made directly from seed grain heavily treated with mercury for use as a fungicide for planting.
• The authors also state that smaller unborn child exposures - such as those resulting from mothers regularly eating certain types and certain amounts of fish - are suspected as causing some detectable, permanent harm in these children’s language, attention, and memory.
• Under the inflammatory heading “How Much Mercury is in my Tuna Sandwich,” this white paper seems to promote a need for far more than the FDA’s average methylmercury exposure risk assessment for tuna eaten by people. The Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility would instead prefer a more individualized FDA methyl mercury exposure risk assessment based on the fish eater’s body weight, the amount of certain types of fish eaten by a person in a given time period, and yet other more personalized factors of methylmercury exposure - plus eating certain types and certain amounts of fish.
• This white paper refers back to much of the same data that the EPA methylmercury regulatory reference dose used for the EPA to regulate methylmercury in recreational and sport fish. Recreational and sport fish are those fish that you and/or your neighbor(s) personally catch. This white paper should instead have referred back to the FDA regulatory methylmercury action level legally used to regulate methylmercury in all commercial fish sold in the United States.

A Bottom Line:
Human exposure to mercury exposure and other harmful chemicals found in the environment remain highly visible and contentious public health issues.

The Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility seems to advocate far greater and stricter federal government methylmercury regulation in fish/seafood eaten by U.S. people.

Find This White Paper for Your Review:
In Harm’s Way. Toxic Threats to Child Development.
http://psr.igc.org/ihw-project.htm