“Fish stories,” we write in this morning’s Providence Journal, “are just like every other media phenomenon: Bad news makes for better headlines. So mercury fears, however misguided, tend to out-shout the reasons our mothers taught us that fish was ‘brain food.’ And in America’s poorest households, children are being left with the short end of the fish stick.”
At our sister website MercuryFacts.org, Journal readers—and you—can read about how hundreds of thousands of economically disadvantaged kids have been born without the prenatal benefit of omega-3 fatty acids. Why? Because canned tuna was the only source of omega-3s their moms could afford. And a cabal of environmental activist organizations has unfairly given this health food a “poison” label, because of trace mercury levels that have always been in tuna and other ocean fish. Levels of mercury that have never hurt anyone.
Scared moms. Fish-free pregnancy diets. Diminished childhood IQs.
From our op-ed:
Seafood warnings are hurting, not helping, America’s most vulnerable kids. Sad? Yes. Shameful? Absolutely.
There’s no evidence that unborn children are suffering any ill effects from the parts-per-billion mercury levels in tuna, either. Dr. Ashley Roman of the New York University Medical Center told Reuters last summer that “there has been no case of fetal mercury toxicity due to fish consumption reported in the United States.”
The entire mercury panic may, in fact, be the only public-health “epidemic” in history without a body count.
If you haven’t yet read our heart-breaking report, Tuna Meltdown, there’s no time like the present. We’ve all seen fish advisories plastered across grocery counters, mercury warnings on the evening news, and sushi scares in our newspapers. All in the name of protecting kids. But now this report has documented just how much damage green groups (and their allies in the federal government) have done to the very children they intended to help.
