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This news story originally provided by
The
Charleston Gazette
West Virginians should limit their consumption of fish from all
state rivers and streams because of high levels of mercury
poisoning, state regulators announced Monday.
The statewide advisory — the first of its kind in West Virginia —
warns residents not to eat more than one meal per week of all sport
fish except rainbow trout.
For some species, including bass and catfish, state officials
advised as few as one or two meals per month.
The general advisory also continues fish consumption warnings for
dioxin and PCBs for 17 rivers and lakes, including the Kanawha, Ohio
and Potomac rivers.
State public health, environmental and natural resources
officials announced the much broader fish warning on mercury after a
two-year study found widespread mercury contamination of state
waterways.
In that study, state officials found levels of mercury that
warranted consumption advisories in 78 percent of the streams
sampled, said Bill Toomey of the state Bureau of Public Health.
“We didn’t have any information, and now we have a pretty good
bit,” said Pat Campbell, an assistant director with the state
Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Water and Waste
Management.
Still, the DEP lists only about 17 waterways as being impaired by
mercury pollution.
If DEP does not include the streams on its official “impaired
waterways” list, regulators have no way to force a cleanup.
“There is no mechanism for cleaning up these streams,” said
Margaret Janes, senior policy analyst at the Appalachian Center for
the Economy and the Environment. “The fish advisories have no
regulatory impact whatsoever.”
Mercury is a highly toxic metal. When emitted into the air, it
can fall with rain, enter water bodies and move up the food chain to
humans.
In West Virginia and in the United States at large, coal-fired
power plants are considered the largest source of mercury emissions.
Those emissions remain unregulated. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency is under a court order to issue new mercury
regulations by mid-March.
Mercury can cause neurological problems, and is particularly
dangerous to pregnant women and unborn children. A federal study
found that between 300,000 and 600,000 of the 4 million babies born
in the United States in 2000 may have been exposed to “unacceptable”
levels of methyl mercury because their mothers ate a diet rich in
fish.
On its Web site,
www.wvdhhr
.org/fish/default.asp, the public health agency provides detailed
explanations of the advisories, and how to calculate the size and
frequency of meals that include sport fish from West Virginia
waters.
The agency warned that the advisories “should not be viewed as
law or regulation.”
“It is intended to help anglers and their families make educated
choices about where to fish, what types of fish to eat, how to limit
the amount and frequency of fish eaten, and how to prepare and cook
fish to reduce contaminants,” the agency said in a news release.
Bret Preston, a fisheries program manager for the state Division
of Natural Resources, told The Associated Press, “I don’t think the
message is people should stop fishing. I think the message is people
should be careful about what they are eating.”
In 1998, federal regulators began questioning why West Virginia
had no fish consumption advisories for mercury. At the time, most
surrounding states had mercury-based consumption advisories.
In 2001, DEP obtained EPA funding for a statewide survey of the
levels of mercury and PCBs in fish. Nearly 400 samples from 56 water
bodies were collected.
State officials received the final study in May 2004. Since then,
officials have been privately debating whether to issue a statewide
or a more limited advisory.
“It’s a bittersweet thing to me,” Campbell said Monday.
“I’m glad we were able to get the money and do the study so we
could answer these significant questions,” he said. “But the bitter
part is we do have fish with levels of contaminants that warrant
low-level advisories.”
Campbell said that DEP does not list all streams with mercury
fish advisories in its impaired streams database because the state’s
water quality standard for mercury is outdated.
Currently, Campbell said, the state’s legal limit on mercury is
0.5 parts per million in fish tissue. Fish advisories are issued
based on lower levels than that, and EPA recommends the state use
0.3 parts per million as a legal limit on mercury in fish.
“The 0.5 number in the state rule is obviously outdated,”
Campbell said. “It’s something that needs to be updated.”
Campbell said such a change would have to be made by the state
Environmental Quality Board, and approved by the Legislature.
Over the last few years, lawmakers have been trying to strip the
environmental board of its rulemaking authority. Industry lobbyists
allege the board writes rules that are too tough and expensive to
follow.
To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call
348-1702.
Fish consumption advisory
The Associated Press
A two-year study that sampled fish from 56 locations prompted
state health, environmental and natural resource officials to issue
a statewide advisory warning residents about possible mercury
contamination from fish caught in state waterways.
Species/Meal limits
Black bass (largemouth, smallmouth, spotted) less than 12
inches/Two meals a month
Channel catfish larger than 17 inches/Two meals a month
Sauger/Two meals a month
All suckers/Two meals a month
Black bass (largemouth, smallmouth, spotted) greater than 12
inches/One meal a month
Walleye/One meal a month
Saugeye/One meal a month
White bass/One meal a month
Hybrid striped bass/One meal a month
Rainbow trout/No limit
Channel catfish less than 17 inches/One meal a week
All other species/One meal a week
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