Clean Water In the News

Diners should use caution with local fish, experts say

More than a dozen fish species found in the Indian River Lagoon region -- including such prized catches as spotted sea trout, King mackerel and snowy grouper -- test at mercury levels so high that women of child-bearing age and young children should not eat them.

Another dozen lagoon species average mercury levels high enough that public health advisories say those two groups should only eat them once a month and everybody else, no more than once a week.

The reason: The toxic metal mercury keeps raining out of the sky from local power plants, wildfires and from industry as far away as China. It sprinkles into the lagoon, making its way into the aquatic food chain.

Mercury also has collected into a toxic "hot spot" the size of Alabama located about 180 miles offshore of Brevard.

Mercury's persistent presence in the state's fresh and marine waters is prompting the Florida Health Department to strengthen its health advisories for mercury in fish. The stricter advisories should be out by next month.

"There's some data that indicate (people who eat) high levels of seafood can have elevated levels of mercury even if the fish is not considered contaminated," said Joe Sekerke, a state toxicologist.

Mercury is among the most toxic elements in humans and marine mammals because it builds up and magnifies up the food chain.

Symptoms of mercury poisoning range from stomach discomfort to brain damage, birth defects and death. The symptoms intensify if the body accumulates mercury faster than it can be shed.

As many as 600,000 babies may be born in the U.S. each year with irreversible brain damage because pregnant mothers ate mercury-contaminated fish, the Environmental Protection Agency said.

A state health department database shows about a dozen mercury poisonings on average per year in Florida. The database lists 33 mercury poisonings last year, but it's uncertain how many, if any, were from seafood. And many times the symptoms are mild enough that they go unreported.

From where?

The mercury that winds up in fish comes mostly from Florida's coal-fired power plants, cement plants and other industrial facilities.

Those emitted at least 2,745 pounds of mercury in 2005, compared with 2,381 pounds five years earlier, according to the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory.

The Stanton Energy coal plant off State Road 528, about 16 miles west of Brevard in Orange County, emitted 210 pounds of mercury in 2005, up from 187 pounds in 2004, according to EPA's database.

Brevard has two power plants within about two miles of each other in Port St. John that burn a low-grade oil which also can release small amounts of mercury. But 2005 data for those two plants is missing from EPA's database.

By comparison, the Reliant Energy plant in Port St. John averaged about 9 pounds of mercury between and 2001 and 2004. Florida Power and Light Co.'s Web site says its nine power plants release a combined 75 pounds of mercury compounds per year.

It doesn't take much mercury, though, to make a water body and its food web foul. Just 1/25th of a teaspoon into a 60-acre lake could contaminate the lake enough to make fish there unsafe to eat.

Top predator fish are the most dangerous to eat. Sharks caught in the lagoon region have tested from two to six times more than the level of mercury safe to eat.

Species lower on the food chain, such as shrimp and clams, generally test at safe levels. But even blue crabs in the South Atlantic region have at times reached levels that call for limited consumption.

Most species of fish are safe, though, if eaten in moderation.

What's being done?

Electric utilities -- the major mercury polluters -- have been given until 2018 to reduce mercury emissions to about 15 tons from the current 48 tons.

Environmentalists doubt that will ever happen, though, because federal rules will allow power plants that don't reduce mercury to buy pollution credits from ones that do.

"When you set this sort of cap-and-trade program for a pollutant that has real local impacts, you create hot spots," said Mark Ferrulo, director of Environment Florida, a nonprofit group.

Because of mercury's localized effects, his group has joined a lawsuit with several other environmental groups to force the federal government to speed up mercury reductions.

"We're closing in on the years when we thought we should already be seeing a 90 percent reduction in mercury pollution," he said.

But some feel the mercury warnings are overblown.

"It's probably the only health condition that the federal government has issued advisories on that's never hurt anybody," said David Martosko, director of research at the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., funded in part by the restaurant industry. "It's entirely hypothetical."

Consumers can eat 10 times what public health advisories suggest, he said, because the advisories are generally 10 times lower than levels associated with adverse effects.

Sandy Shelton doesn't worry too much about mercury in the fish she eats or what she feeds customers at Ozzie's Crabhouse in Grant-Valkaria.

"I never have heard of anybody dying of blue crabs and they have been coming here for 40 years," said Shelton, owner of Ozzie's. "I've never had anybody ask about the mercury."

Contact Waymer at 242-3663 or jwaymer@floridatoday.com.