Methylmercury, Fish Consumption, and the Precautionary Principle

The Federal Government Report:

Organized by the Committee on Environmental and Natural Resources (CENR), Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) of The White House. This workshop was held in Raleigh, North Carolina on November 18-20, 1998.

Review This Federal Government Report:
http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/printFriendly.cfm?objectid=03614B65-BC68-D231-4E915F93AF9A6872

The Purpose of this Federal Government Report:
To report on the Methylmercury Workshop organized by the Committee on Environmental and Natural Resources (CENR), Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) of The White House. This workshop was held in Raleigh, North Carolina on November 18-20, 1998.

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

• This federal government report is not a peer-reviewed, scientific paper.
• This federal government report was distributed in 1999.
• The organizing committee was chaired by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The organizing committee included representatives from the:
  1. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS);
  2. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation;
  3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC);
  4. Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry (ATSDR);
  5. Food and Drug Administration (FDA);
  6. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA);
  7. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA);
  8. Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP); and the
  9. Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
     
• Methylmercury is a chemical pollutant that can harm both the human nervous system and mental development.
• Scientists have difficulty identifying any methylmercury bad affects caused by eating the types of fish that most Americans eat.
• All the scientific studies reviewed by the committee are of high scientific quality. The expert panel recognized that each of these scientific studies had overcome significant obstacles to produce important, scientific results.
• The expert panel believes that the Faroes, Seychelles, and Amazon methylmercury studies in people must be continued to be funded in order for these three scientific studies to determine the bad affects of methylmercury on the developing human nervous system.
• All three of these methylmercury in people scientific studies would benefit if the researchers involved would all evaluate the same things in the people test subjects using similar methods.
• The Faroes and Seychelles studies provide valuable information about the potential bad health effects caused by methylmercury.
• Some differences are clearly present in the results from the Faroes and Seychelles studies where scientists examined possible bad affects of methylmercury in children. However, the panels were not able to clearly identify these differences.
• Among possible sources of some of these differences are:

  1. The different effects of one-meal-at-a-time versus continuous exposure to methylmercury;

  2. How people who are genetically different from one another respond differently to methylmercury;

  3. The lack of common things to look and test for in the Faroes and Seychelles studies; and

  4. Several other things that tend to sway the results one way or another including the participating test subjects’ diet and lifestyle - plus the bad chemicals (methylmercury, PCBs, etc.) present in the seafood eaten.

• There are also good chemicals in the fish eaten by the people in these three methylmercury studies. These good chemicals (good fatty acids) may be good for nervous system development of unborn children

A Bottom Line:

• The interagency organizing committee agreed that the discussions among the expert panels – plus the resulting workshop report - will all be important in later public health policy actions taken by the federal government.
• The Faroes, Seychelles, and Amazon methylmercury research studies provide important new scientific information on the potential bad health effects caused by methylmercury.
• Significant uncertainties remain because these three studies vary in:
  
  1. How the human test subjects are exposed to methylmercury and/or PCBs;
  2. The nervous system and mental development functions being tested;
  3. The unwanted factors that tend to sway the results of the studies;
  4. The way the results from these three studies are analyzed using statistics; and
  5. The basic designs of the three studies.

Find This Federal Government Report for Your Review:
The National Toxicology Program. Report of the Methylmercury Workshop. Organized by the Committee on Environmental and Natural Resources (CENR) Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) of The White House Held in Raleigh, North Carolina on November 18-20, 1998.
http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/printFriendly.cfm?objectid=03614B65-BC68-D231-4E915F93AF9A6872