Eating To Much Tuna

[jfenton]

Someone in my office today mentioned that eating to much tuna can make you sick or poison your body with mercury. Does anyone have any answers or facts to this topic. I have been looking on the internet to find out if this is true. I eat tuna almost everyday for lunch because it is easiest to prepare and take for lunches. If anyone has any facts to this please let me know.

thanks

[sarahm12002]

I eat tuna every day too. I've never heard anyone say that it will poison us :confused

[JoanOH]

This is from July 2004 CONSUMER REPORT

Is the government too lax in advice on tuna consumption?

This spring, two federal agencies issued the government’s first advisory on limits for safe amounts of tuna to eat, because of its mercury content. The Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency say that women of childbearing age, pregnant women, nursing mothers, and young children should eat no more than 6 ounces of tuna steak or canned white albacore tuna per week. (Albacore, different from light tuna, is more likely to accumulate mercury.) As a result of industrial pollution and power-plant emissions, mercury accumulates in fish as they feed and can harm developing nervous systems.

But the government’s advice is at odds with a longstanding EPA safety assessment, which suggests that the limit should be just 3 ounces of albacore a week. That’s the amount recommended by the food-safety experts at Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. They say that if women of childbearing age eat albacore, any other fish they eat that week should be very low-mercury (see the table below). We recommend that young children not eat albacore at all.

Ads from the U.S. Tuna Foundation, a trade group, try to put the government advisory in a very rosy light. One ad says, among other things, that mercury levels in albacore are “well below government standards.” But the government has set no safety standards for mercury in albacore or any other fish.

The government’s advisory said that women of childbearing age and young children should not eat king mackerel, shark, swordfish, or tilefish. However, they may eat up to 12 ounces a week of lower-mercury fish. Fish sticks and fish sandwiches typically served in restaurants are made from low-mercury fish.

Hmmmmm....

Joan J

[Kibs]

Childbearing age? So what, from 13-45? Somehow I don't think eating more than 6oz of tuna a week is gonna do anything bad to you.