Help Your Family Avoid Contaminated Fish
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More seafood articles:
How to Make Sustainable Seafood Choices

You want to provide you and your family with nutritious meals and teach your children how to eat right.  In this process, you have undoubtedly come across information encouraging you to eat foods rich in omega-3s, otherwise known as the “good fats.”  Evidence suggests omega-3s maintain cardiovascular health, are important for prenatal and postnatal neurological development, may reduce tissue inflammation, and can alleviate arthritis symptoms.   With fish providing these omega-3s and other nutrients, you are probably feeding your family fish (or at least a tuna fish sandwich) at least once a week.

Unfortunately, increased testing in many of our lakes, oceans, and rivers has shown a surprising increase in tainted water resulting in contaminated fish.  The contaminants are metals (such as mercury and lead), industrial chemicals (like PCBs), and pesticides (such as DDT and dieldrin).   This means that you have to be careful about what fish you choose and how often you eat fish so that you keep your family safe.

Environmental Defense has a program called Oceans Alive.  This campaign not only works to find constructive solutions to critical marine environment problems but also provides well-documented consumer information to help you make sustainable and health-conscious seafood choices. 

You can go to www.oceansalive.org and click on links under the best and worst seafood to find a Consumption Advisory: Fish To Avoid guide.  This guide breaks down how many meals of any particular fish would be safe for you to eat per month.  Additionally, an Eco Worst and Eco Best stamp identifies worst offenders and best choices for the environment, based on the ecological impacts of how certain fish are caught or farmed.

For canned, white tuna (albacore tuna) most often found in your grocery store, there is a mercury advisory.  Environmental Defense says younger children should eat no more than one tuna meal a month, older children up to two meals, and no more than three meals of tuna per month for adult men and women.

Another commonly eaten fish is Atlantic salmon, widely available in grocery stores, food warehouses, and restaurants.  However, you may be surprised to learn that this fish variety is considered an Eco Worst by Environmental Defense, advising PCB, dioxin, and pesticide contaminants.  Because of Atlantic salmon’s high possibility for contaminants, it is advised that young children eat none of this type of fish; older children and adult men and women are advised to eat the equivalent of only half an Atlantic salmon meal once a month.  As an alternative, wild Alaska salmon has no contaminant advisory or meal restriction – varieties include chinook, chum, coho, pink, and sockeye.  Lesser-known Arctic Char is another good salmon alternative.

Other than fish, you can also obtain valuable omega-3s from flax seed, walnuts, wheat germ, and plant-based omega-3 tablets.  Fish oil supplements would also contain omega-3s but may be subject to contaminant problems depending on the oil’s source.

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