Blah. My current fish information factored in mercury but not PCB. I’ve been thinking atlantic salmon was fine. Now googling “PCB mercury”. Is the first result pretty much accurate or is there more to the story? (And any estimates for the magnitude of effect / whether it is worth worrying about?)
I did the same thing. The studies/abstracts I’ve read talk about effects on children of women with “high levels” of PCBS but I have no idea where I fall on that scale. Like, Inuit women have very high levels, but they’re eating very large amounts of fish, seals, etc. This paper has info about health effects of people eating Great Lakes fish, which may be more relevant to you.
My very non-expert impression is that it seems to be less serous than mercury. And even the evidence on mercury had some weird bits, like studies that show mercury is good for babies’ neurodevelopment (because they didn’t control for maternal fish consumption, and apparently the fish was more helpful than the mercury was harmful!) But obviously the goal is to get the good fish nutrition without the pollutants.
Of course, I live on the great lakes and my family eats a lots of fish… It probably doesn’t matter for me but not sure what to feed my little sister now, especially considering what you said about half-life. Attempts at guidelines keep waving around “moderation” in response to mixed messages from research, but even if by coincidence the effects are ∩ shaped and not linear I doubt vague ideas about moderation are going to hit approximately optimal.
Cross fingers and hope the good list is accurate, I guess?
A list of cheaper oily fish with negligible PCBs and mercury
The problem is that fish contamination critically depends on where that fish lived. This means that just a list of fish species isn’t very useful, you need to know where that fish was caught and I’m not sure that information is easily available.
Blah. My current fish information factored in mercury but not PCB. I’ve been thinking atlantic salmon was fine. Now googling “PCB mercury”. Is the first result pretty much accurate or is there more to the story? (And any estimates for the magnitude of effect / whether it is worth worrying about?)
I did the same thing. The studies/abstracts I’ve read talk about effects on children of women with “high levels” of PCBS but I have no idea where I fall on that scale. Like, Inuit women have very high levels, but they’re eating very large amounts of fish, seals, etc. This paper has info about health effects of people eating Great Lakes fish, which may be more relevant to you.
My very non-expert impression is that it seems to be less serous than mercury. And even the evidence on mercury had some weird bits, like studies that show mercury is good for babies’ neurodevelopment (because they didn’t control for maternal fish consumption, and apparently the fish was more helpful than the mercury was harmful!) But obviously the goal is to get the good fish nutrition without the pollutants.
Of course, I live on the great lakes and my family eats a lots of fish… It probably doesn’t matter for me but not sure what to feed my little sister now, especially considering what you said about half-life. Attempts at guidelines keep waving around “moderation” in response to mixed messages from research, but even if by coincidence the effects are ∩ shaped and not linear I doubt vague ideas about moderation are going to hit approximately optimal.
Cross fingers and hope the good list is accurate, I guess?
The problem is that fish contamination critically depends on where that fish lived. This means that just a list of fish species isn’t very useful, you need to know where that fish was caught and I’m not sure that information is easily available.