“From all the reports we had seen about mercury and its impact on development, we thought we would be able to show how bad it was for children. But we didn't find it at all... [C]hildren whose mothers had the highest levels of mercury, did significantly better than children whose moms had low mercury levels.”
— University of Rochester Pediatrics Professor Dr. Philip Davidson, telling The Medical Post about his landmark study of heavy fish-eaters in the Seychelles Islands (2006)
“The American public is particularly risk-averse when it comes to food scares. What people hear about the hypothetical risk of eating fish laced with contaminants bears little relation to the scientific evidence.”
— Nutrition consultant Joyce Nettleton, in Financial Times (2006)
“[T]he existing evidence suggests that methyl mercury exposure from fish consumption during pregnancy, of the level seen in most parts of the world, does not have measurable cognitive or behavioural effects in later childhood … For now, there is no reason for pregnant women to reduce fish consumption below current levels, which are probably safe.”
— Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Professor Dr. Constantine Lyketsos, writing in the British medical journal The Lancet (2003)
“Eating lots of ocean fish isn’t much of a hazard compared to missing out on the benefits from not eating fish. A slew of scientific reports have shown that eating fish helps protect against cardiovascular disease and enhances brain development before and after birth … Overstating the almost negligible risk of mercury could adversely affect millions of people who face the risk of heart disease.”
— University of Rochester Professor of Environmental Medicine Dr. Thomas Clarkson (1998)
“There is some junk science at work here. They can say whatever they want [about mercury]; we’ve reviewed the basis for their findings and there isn’t a lot of substance to it.”
— Dr. Charles Lockwood, chairman of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ panel on obstetric practice, discussing the federal government’s mercury-in-fish warnings (2002)
“We know there will be people above the Reference Dose, above the tenfold safety factor. But not far above it. They will be in the zone of safety.”
— Dr. David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration’s chief medical officer, in The Washington Times (2004)
“The mercury content level of most seafood is low and is not a level to cause harm to the health of individuals, even if they are pregnant.”
— From a health advisory issued by the Japanese Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry (2003)
“Consumption of fish is generally considered healthy for your heart, yet people are hearing that they should be concerned about eating fish because of mercury levels. We’ve found no evidence that the low levels of mercury in seafood are harmful. In the Seychelles [Islands], where the women in our study ate large quantities of fish each week while they were pregnant, the children are healthy … These are the same fish that end up on the dinner table in the United States and around the world.”
— University of Rochester pediatric neurologist Dr. Gary Myers, discussing his landmark study published in the British medical journal The Lancet (2003)
“Ninety-two percent of women of child-bearing age already consume below [the EPA’s mercury] Reference Dose, while the top 8 percent still have a margin of safety of about eight-fold.”
— Dr. Michael Bolger, Chief of the FDA’s Contamination Branch, during a joint FDA/EPA meeting (2003)
“Fish and shellfish contain high-quality protein and other essential nutrients, are low in saturated fat, and contain omega-3 fatty acids. A well-balanced diet that includes a variety of fish and shellfish can contribute to heart health and children’s proper growth and development.”
— U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2004)
“Most of us should be eating more fish. It’s an excellent source of protein and it contains essential vitamins and minerals, such as selenium and iodine.”
— United Kingdom Food Standards Agency (2005)
“Mercury is in the ocean. So in theory there is risk associated with fish consumption. But the types of risk are not the frank poisoning events one might picture associated with mercury. We are talking about subtle effects not detectable at the level of the individual. That is because the amount of mercury people are exposed to in the U.S. is not very great.”
— Harvard School of Public Health researcher Dr. Joshua Cohen, speaking to WebMD Medical News (2005)
“The main finding was that at the levels of mercury that we found -- about average for the general population -- there were no cognitive effects.”
— Johns Hopkins University researcher Megan Weil, discussing her 2005 study published in JAMA (the journal of the American Medical Association)
“People overreact to these things, so you have to be careful. You don’t want large numbers giving up the benefits of fish while you damage the whole fishing sector for no good reason.”
— Dr. Sandrine Blanchemanche of the French National Institute for Agronomic Studies, in the Los Angeles Times (2004)
“The Faroe Island studies are not the proper choice for the critical study for a methyl mercury RfD [Reference Dose].”
— Dr. Kenneth Poirier and Dr. Michael Dourson, former EPA Reference Dose / Reference Concentration Work Group co-chairs, in a 2000 letter to the EPA’s Technical Information Staff
“The levels of methyl mercury in California fish are much lower than those that occurred in Japan … We are not aware of any cases of overt poisoning in California, nor would we expect them.”
— California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (2003)
“The only clinical reports of mercury poisoning from fish consumption are those from Japan in the 1950s and 1960s … Although a National Academy of Sciences committee reported that 60,000 children in the United States were at risk as a result of prenatal exposure, they failed to provide any justification or explanation for that conclusion.”
— University of Rochester scientists Dr. Thomas Clarkson and Dr. Gary Myers, and British Medical Research Council scientist Dr. Laszlo Magos, writing in a New England Journal of Medicine review article (2003)
