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8/25/02 Mobile Register
By BEN RAINES Staff Reporter
Doctors and scientists say mercury exposure appears to afflict two groups in America -- well-educated people who can afford to buy the most expensive fish, and recreational anglers and poor "meat" fishermen who eat large marine fish regularly. Some strong patterns appear to be emerging from new data gathered by sources including the New Jersey Department of Health, a clinic affiliated with Harvard University and doctors in San Francisco, Wisconsin and Canada. The evidence suggests that high mercury levels in people, such as those found during hair tests conducted by the Mobile Register, may be much more common than doctors, scientists and government health experts have believed, especially in certain segments of the population. The new data also shows that the country's main source of information about mercury levels in people -- a Centers for Disease Control health survey -- does not capture the widespread nature of the most severe levels of contamination. CDC officials said their survey is designed to produce an average level for the entire nation, and cannot show the exposure levels for the most contaminated 5 percent of Americans, or 14 million people, because the agency has too few samples for such calculations. "This is a disease of the wealthy. It's affecting the fine wine and fine fish crowd," said Dr. Jane Hightower, who has tested more than 100 patients at her San Francisco practice. "It's hitting the people who are following the prevailing health advice to eat a lot of fish and can afford to buy the good stuff." Hightower said she started testing patients for mercury while searching for an explanation for symptoms she discovered in her patients, such as fatigue, hair loss, memory loss, muscle aches and difficulty concentrating. In a paper posted last year on the San Francisco Medical Society Web site, Hightower reported that 62 of 123 patients, all of whom ate a lot of fish, had mercury levels higher than the Environmental Protection Agency's safe level for mercury in the body. Her results appear to mirror results obtained last year from Mobile Register-sponsored mercury testing of 70 Gulf Coast residents who said they ate seafood at least once a week. Hair samples tested by the Register indicated that a number of local seafood consumers had mercury levels five to 10 times higher than the EPA's safe level. Twenty of the people Hightower tested had mercury levels at least four times higher than the EPA safe level. A handful of her patients tested more than 10 times higher than the safe level. Similarly high mercury levels in affluent Americans have recently been documented around the country: A pair of lawyers in Wisconsin tested by that state's health department, and a number of Bostonians tested at a clinic affiliated with Harvard, had mercury levels 10 or more times above the safe level. Hightower said she was shocked to find high mercury levels in her patients, some of whom are physicians, especially in light of new studies that appear to show a strong correlation between elevated mercury levels and increased risk of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. She said doctors are being caught off guard when it comes to mercury exposure from fish because the government has downplayed the risks. Part of the reason that doctors find themselves surprised may be that the government has little data covering mercury in people and has been measuring mercury levels in the general population only since 1999. The main tool for examining mercury exposure in America is "less than ideal" and "not designed to capture the people with the highest mercury levels" or "account for mercury exposure in places like coastal towns," according to CDC officials recently interviewed by the Register. Much was made of the CDC's health survey last month during a U.S. Food and Drug Administration meeting in suburban Washington to discuss the dangers of mercury in the nation's seafood supply. The survey, called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), showed that 8 percent of American women have mercury levels above what the EPA considers safe. Elevated mercury levels are believed to be a cause of birth defects. At the meeting, speakers from the seafood industry and the FDA used the study to support their contention that mercury contamination is not much of an issue in this country, affecting less than 10 percent of the population. Mike Bolger, one of the key players in the FDA's mercury policy, used the CDC data to support a claim that even the most exposed people in America "still have a margin of safety" from dangerous levels of mercury. Bolger was referring to the fact that the EPA's "safe level" of 1 part per million of mercury in the body was set 10 times lower than the "benchmark" dose -- the level at which effects on humans become apparent. But EPA officials believe mercury may begin to affect people at levels well below the benchmark level. And some of the people tested by Hightower, the state of Wisconsin, the Cambridge Health Alliance and the Register were found to have mercury levels that exceeded the benchmark dose, eradicating any "margin of safety." At the July meeting, the EPA and consumer groups used the CDC data -- showing that about 8 percent of the population was above the safe level -- as evidence that tens of millions of American women and children are exposed to what they termed dangerous amounts of mercury. "The truth, as usual, is probably somewhere in between," said Alan Stern, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a mercury specialist with the state of New Jersey. "But remember, it's not at all inconsequential that around 10 percent of the population are over the safe dose for mercury. That is a red flag. "If something like 1 to 3 percent of the population is at a level of mercury exposure where we might expect there to be a significant risk of recognizable effects, that is not a small number." Three percent of the population would amount to more than 8 million Americans.