After Jeremy Piven won a legal decision saying yes, he may have had mercury poisoning from sushi, the National Fisheries Institute, a seafood industry group, issued a statement. Its crux was this:
Despite the fact that the arbitrator ruled in Piven’s favor, NFI cautions reporters and editors to continue to treat Piven’s statements with skepticism. It is important to note that no peer reviewed medical journal has ever published any evidence of a case of methylmercury poisoning caused by the normal consumption of commercial seafood in the U.S.
Excuse me? Surely they know about Jane Hightower’s work. I suspect this is why they used the term medical journal. Hightower’s work on mercury poisoning was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, which is peer-reviewed. Hightower is a doctor. So what if EHP isn’t a medical journal? This statement, although literally true, is completely misleading. Hightower’s article is here. It supports exactly what Piven claims.
Here’s a quote from Hightower:
I think I provided a missing piece of the puzzle: That this [excessive mercury] exposure is coming from fish that we purchase at the grocery stores and restaurants. . . . Some people are eating so much of the commercial, high-mercury fish that they are over the mark for tolerable allowances set by the Environmental Protection Agency, the FDA, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and the World Health Organization.
Seth,
Rest assured the National Fisheries Institute is not misleading you. Perhaps you are confused about Hightower’s research.
Hightower’s peer reviewed published work, medical journal or not, simply does not reach the conclusion you suggest it does. Hightower’s published work concludes that eating fish that contain mercury can raise a patient’s mercury levels—that’s it. That’s a simple known fact, nothing ground breaking or arguable there. If you believe she reaches other peer-reviewed collusions about mercury toxicity perhaps you should read her book.
Throughout her book, Hightower writes about the fact that her own colleagues express skepticism about her work because, “there isn’t much here, and there is not enough cause-and-effect data that is significant” (p 39).
She even admits just that in relaying a discussion about her own patient survey. She recalls a conversation with then-EPA official Kathryn Mahaffey. Hightower remembers Mahaffey saying “just stick to the numbers” because “we know people have symptoms, but this [cause and effect] was harder to prove” (p 84). So, here she is highlighting the fact that her own survey does not succeed in linking elevated mercury levels to the symptoms she claims they cause. Her survey merely concludes that eating fish that contain mercury can raise a patient’s mercury levels.
If you are under the impression that Hightower’s peer-reviewed work concludes anything else further research on your part may be in order.
Gavin Gibbons
National Fisheries Institute
Gavin,
You say Hightower found that “eating fish that contains mercury can raise a patient’s mercury level” and “that’s it”. That’s wrong. You and I and everyone else already knew that eating food with mercury raises mercury levels. That’s obvious. If her work merely found the obvious it wouldn’t be interesting.
Her work is interesting because it suggested something that wasn’t obvious at all: You can get too much mercury from eating a lot of store-bought or restaurant-bought fish.
So what if her colleagues “express skepticism”? You’ll hear skepticism about any new conclusion, right or wrong.
Perhaps you take Kathryn Mahaffey to be a disinterested observer but I don’t. I’m sure she had pressure on her to reach certain conclusions that had nothing to do with the truthfulness of those conclusions. Telling a scientist to “stick to the numbers” is ridiculous; it’s like saying, “don’t reach any conclusions from your research”.
Hightower thought her work was important enough to write a book about it. (Which I don’t have, so I can’t discuss in detail.) She would have been crazy to write a book about something as obvious as “eating fish with mercury can raise mercury levels”. If you disagree with her conclusions it would be interesting to know why, but all you do is quote others disagreeing with her. That’s not persuasive, to say the least. I can find people who disagree that the earth is round.
The “fish that contain mercury” you keep referring to — where do you think Hightower’s patients obtained it? From the same place most people get their fish — stores and restaurants? Or somewhere else? And, while they were eating it, did they realize it could cause mercury poisoning?
Seth
Seth,
I understand your incredulity over the fact that Hightower’s peer-reviewed, published work does not succeed in linking elevated mercury levels to the symptoms she claims they cause but that is simply a fact. Feel free to review her article or her book and you will find that her work, as you put it, “merely found the obvious.” And I agree it isn’t particularly interesting.
Here’s something I do find interesting. You’ve spent quite a bit of time in Asia and we all know many Asian cultures eat as much as, if not more than, 10 times the amount of fish Americans do—why, do you theorize, that those populations do not show signs of mercury poisoning?
Gavin
Gavin,
Please. I have no “incredulity” about Hightower’s conclusions. As you must know.
Perhaps you could tell us why her research does not show what I say it shows? Failure to answer this simple question — what is the problem with Hightower’s conclusions? — is making your employer look bad. They really seem to have no case; if they did, surely you would have made it by now. Flat statements (“is simply a fact”) are not an argument. But surely you know this.
As for Asia, they eat less fish — and the wrong fish — than needed to get mercury poisoning. It’s rich Americans that eat lots of tuna. Very little tuna is eaten in China. Too expensive.
Seth
Seth
So how do you explain the health of the Japanese and the Inuits?
Checkout the facts and make the linkages about their seafood consumption.
There are truckloads of evidence to show that mercury in seafood is a furphy – why dont we have a daily notice in the newspapers about the daily deaths of mercury from seafood consumption? Because there is no story there – its a myth. I would worry more about crossing the road or getting out of bed in the morning….
Every time you and others put fear into eating seafood you are doing more harm than good
Get the information from specialists who are doing constant research on these matters – there are many of them in the world Hibbeln, Strain, Sinclair, Crawford, Ralston, etc etc
Roy
The Japanese & the Inuits eat a lot of fermented food. Far more than we do. That’s how I explain their health. Check out my posts about the umami hypothesis.
As for “a furphy” — that’s not even close to true. Read Hightower’s paper. You have to eat a lot of high-mercury fish to get easy-to-notice mercury poisoning, but it’s not at all a “myth”. It’s possible that eating less fish produces hard-to-notice mercury poisoning.
I have no idea what these “specialists” are coming up with that you want me to read. I don’t know what “these matters” are. If seafood is perfectly safe I can’t imagine why its safety is the subject of “constant research”. Really, I have no idea what you’re talking about.