'Seafood's Delights -- Safe to Eat?'

["Susan K. Snow" <sksnow@1stnet.com>]

To reduce heart disease, physicans urge their patients to eat less red 
meat.  Instead, they recommend omega-rich foods.

Once upon a time, before the chemical age, sea's bountiful harvest 
--lobster, crabs, clams, salmon, shrimp, oysters were blessed with 
omega-rich acids.  However, now they are damned with human pollution 
--released from sewage plants, pesticide runoff, industrial 
waste effluent.    

In the November 11, 1996 issue of Planet ENN, Eleanor M Dorsey and 
Priscilla Brooks write: 

 "..The sediments beneath most of New England's urban harbors and bays
are contaminated by decades of unregulated disposal of toxic chemicals
like heavy metals, PCBs, PAHs, and pesticides. Marine life located in
these sediments or feeding on the ocean bottom may accumulate toxic
contaminants in concentrations that are harmful to humans if eaten in
sufficient quantities. Many contaminants increase in concentration as
they pass up the food chain and as the fish consuming them gets older; so
larger and older fish are more likely to be of concern."

"Polychlorinated biphenyls were widely banned in the United States and
elsewhere in the late 1970s. Once dumped into the environment, they
remain toxic gor many years. PCBs spilled in harbors are ingested by
marine organsms and become more concentrated at higher levels of the food
chain. Human health effects include neurological and reproductive
disorders, skin lesions, liver damage, low birth weight, and possibly,
cancer."

"Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are formed by the incomplete combustion
of fuels. Like PCBs, PAHs are persistent in the environment and
concentrate in the food chain. Some cause cancer as well as other health
effects."

"Heavy metals consist of the elements of arsenic, cadmium, chromium,
lead, mercury, silver, tin, and zinc. These materials do not degrade and,
like PCBs and PAHs, tend to concentrate at higher levels of the food
chain. Heavy metals cause a variety of toxic effects in humans."

The danger from chemical contaminants comes not from a single meal, but
from many meals of contaminated seafood. Pregnant women, women of
childbearing age, and young children need to be more careful than others
about chemical contaminants..."

See: 'Seafood's Delights -- Safe to Eat?' 
http://www.enn.com/planetenn/111196/feature2.htm