[strokes762]

I :taped:ing love sardines! Breakfast on toast with cream cheese, lunch in coleslaw tacos, dinner with peas, carrots and brown rice. I eat sardines probably 5 times a week. There inexpensive, so they can be stacked deep and cheap for prepping. High in omega-3 fatty acids and protein; low in fat. Whats not to love about them? The risk of mercury . I tend to buy sardines packed in the US, Canada, Poland and Morocco. I always avoid sardines from China and Thailand. Even with being careful of my sources, how can I know what my mercury risk is? Some articles say low:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/is-mercury-in-fish-dangerous
But I'm skeptical. Health isn't something to say "no big deal" about. But am I being too worried? Should I stop eating fish all together? Anyone here experience or know someone that had high mercury levels because of too much fish?

 

[dmas]

Sardines are almost at the bottom of the food chain. So they don't have much mercury concentrated in them. As a cold water oily fish they have a lot going for them, at one point i considered uping my consumption. However they have a lot of purine and if you are susceptible to that you can get very painful gout. Or in my case kidney stones. I don't eat any now, if i was you i would cut back though i would not worry about mercury in sardines.

 

[strokes762]

Sardines are almost at the bottom of the food chain. So they don't have much mercury concentrated in them. As a cold water oily fish they have a lot going for them, at one point i considered uping my consumption. However they have a lot of purine and if you are susceptible to that you can get very painful gout. Or in my case kidney stones. I don't eat any now, if i was you i would cut back though i would not worry about mercury in sardines.

I hadn't considered gout. Thanks for the warning.

 

[HomeDefense]

30 years ago there was a mercury warning for the pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area on the Minnesota border with Canada. That was my favorite area in Minnesota. You were not supposed to eat fish taken out of the area more than once per week.

The story was that there was mercury in the rocks. Mercury in rocks is not water-soluble but is acid-soluble. They claimed that the acid rainfall was so bad in northern Minnesota that they measured rainfall with as much acidity as a glass of orange juice. The acid rain was allegedly coming from emissions from Canadian power plants. Upper atmosphere currents were driving it into Minnesota.

I don't know what the current status of this is.

Whatever happened to the acid rainfall scares we heard so much about in the 1980s?

There are worse things than mercury found in fish. Fukushima added millions of tons of radioactive water to the Pacific, and they are storing over a million more tons that they may release into the ocean.

Seven years on, radioactive water at Fukushima plant still flowing into ocean, study finds

Fukushima’s Other Big Problem: A Million Tons of Radioactive Water

Fukushima Radiation Has Contaminated The Entire Pacific Ocean (And It's Going To Get Worse)

This has raised the radioactivity of the entire Pacific Ocean and possibly contaminated all the fish. We are not currently eating anything from the Pacific or Alaska.

 

[Snyper708]

There are worse things than mercury found in fish. Fukushima added millions of tons of radioactive water to the Pacific, and they are storing over a million more tons that they may release into the ocean.

Using the weight of the water is a misleading, fear-mongering tactic.

What really matters is the type and amount of the actual radioactive elements.

 

[pengyou]

Using the weight of the water is a misleading, fear-mongering tactic.

What really matters is the type and amount of the actual radioactive elements.

:thumb::thumb::thumb::thumb::thumb::thumb::thumb:

 

[HomeDefense]

Using the weight of the water is a misleading, fear-mongering tactic.

What really matters is the type and amount of the actual radioactive elements.

True, but there were some very nasty components in the Fukushima radioactive water release into the Pacific. From the Wikipedia article:

Large quantities of radioactive particles from the incident, including iodine-131 and caesium-134/137, have since been detected around the world. Substantial levels have been seen in California and in the Pacific Ocean.

Radiation effects from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Caesium-137 is one of the worst radioactive contaminants.

Caesium-137, with a half-life of 30.17 years, is one of the two principal medium-lived fission products, along with 90Sr, which are responsible for most of the radioactivity of spent nuclear fuel after several years of cooling, up to several hundred years after use. It constitutes most of the radioactivity still left from the Chernobyl

Caesium-137

I really don't want any of it in the food I eat.

 

[Aerindel]

There has been no credible scientific studies showing any serious danger from Fukushima. The actual amounts are minuscule, the effects, infinitesimal, even for the people directly exposed, as stated in the link provided. People are easily scared by radiation because its physics is not commonly taught or studied and it seems an exotic threat compared to others, but in reality, its easily detected, easily studied, and something we live with all our lives and something our body has evolved to deal. We are constantly repairing radiation damage all the time, it is only when exposed to large amounts that it is dangerous, not even one person was exposed to lethal levels from Fukushima, let alone anyone on the other side of the world. These are the simple facts, as reported by WHO, etc.

Now of course, all this could be a lie by those organizations....but since the same people who are able to measure radioactive particles in the ocean are the same people who are saying not to worry about it, I would venture that the probability of conspiracy is low. If there was really some vast danger they where trying to cover up I think they would simple cover up the presence of radioactive particles period rather than very carefuly monitor and report them, and then try to lie about the danger.

Mercury on the other hand can be a problem in theory, in certain fish, as even though the quantities present in the water are tiny, mercury gets concentrated in long lived predatory fish.

Even so, the primary risk is to pregnant women and young children.

There have only been TWO documented cases of mercury poisoning from fish in the US ever. In practical terms, the risk is very minor, unless you eat swordfish five times a week while gestating children.

For everyone who is not pregnant the benefits of fish far outweigh the risks.

Which is too bad as fish is pretty expensive and virtually all fisheries are 'drying' up.

 

[Snyper708]

True, but there were some very nasty components in the Fukushima radioactive water release into the Pacific. From the Wikipedia article:


Radiation effects from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Caesium-137 is one of the worst radioactive contaminants.


Caesium-137

I really don't want any of it in the food I eat.

So what does that have to do with the weight of the water?
If you put a gram of Caesium-137 in a gallon of water or a billion gallons of water, it's still just a gram.

If you dump it in the ocean it's diluted even more.

Don't fall for the hype.

Your own source said:

Preliminary dose-estimation reports by WHO and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) indicate that, outside the geographical areas most affected by radiation, even in locations within Fukushima prefecture, the predicted risks remain low and no observable increases in cancer above natural variation in baseline rates are anticipated