If you care about your health and care about the planet then you should stop eating fish and seafood right now. There are very real health and ethical reasons to do so.
Why? Well, because the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is substantial.
I won’t pretend to know much about he technical details of the leak itself, but even if the well is successfully closed soon there is still the issue of the existing level of pollution and its impact on sea-living species.
Obviously the US government will not allow fishing in the water that is being directly affected by the oil spill, but that does not mean that we are ‘off the hook’ so to speak.
We have two serious issues to look at when we decide whether we are comfortable eating seafood: firstly what types of toxins could find their way into fish and shellfish, and secondly what would be the effects of overfishing in the non-oil-affected parts of the world to make up for the shortfall in the supply of fish?
Due to the oil spill there are a number of different substances polluting the Gulf of Mexico area and surrounding waters. Firstly we have crude oil and secondly we have the dispersant being used, currently Corexit 9500. Constituents of crude oil include both mercury and lead which are two heavy metals that are highly poisonous to humans. Crude oil also includes benzene, toluene and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), all of which cause cancer. Scientists do claim that PAH does not accumulate in fish, but concede that it does accumulate in shellfish. The Corexit 9500 dispersant is a highly toxic chemical, roughly four times more poisonous than oil.
Fish will absorb pollutants from the water through their respiratory systems. These toxins will not be removed from the fish’s bodies as quickly as they are being received and so the poisonous substances such as mercury and lead tend to build up. In addition, some fish are predatory and so these larger fish will have both their own accumulated environmental poisons and those accumulated from the smaller fish. In this way, toxins increase up the food chain and it is the largest, most toxic fish that are typically fished for human consumption.
Mercury results in degenerative illnesses (particularly targeting the brain) in humans and crosses the placenta in pregnant mothers. While mercury will cause degeneration of health in adults, it is significantly more concentrated when consumed by children or accumulated in a foetus. Mercury is suspected to be a leading cause of autism, Down’s syndrome and other intellectual impairments.
Lead affects the nervous system, brain, kidneys and reproductive system. In children it has been associated with low IQ, slow growth and hearing defects. In laboratory tests on animals, no minimum quantity of lead has been considered a safe dose; even the smallest quantities have had a harmful effect.
Corexit 9500, the chemical dispersant used by BP to try to break up the oil from the surface of the water is known to be both more toxic and also less effective than other chemical disbursants, requiring a heavier application. Corexit 9500 was reputedly banned in Britain over a decade ago due to its highly toxic affects on both the environment and people; in this case we have Corexit 9500 being used over a large volume of water.
The use of this chemical in such quantities and at such oceanic depths is unknown in human history, and the exact contents of the mixture are a trade secret. Expected health effects are respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders, again grossly affecting children due to their smaller size. At this time over 600,000 gallons of Corexit 9500 have been utilised in an attempt to clean up the oil spill. To make things even worse, the toxicity of Corexit 9500 in a solution of water increases with water temperature, and oil in the water is resulting in higher water temperatures.
Clearly the sea-creatures living in and around the Gulf of Mexico are going to be off the menu for some time. The government won’t willingly allow the people to eat contaminated fish right?
The answer is both yes and no. The govenment might not willingly allow fish to be caught from the worst polluted areas, but there will be a significant pressure to allow fishing in other areas nearby. The Gulf Coast is responsible for about half of the total US harvest in its high season. Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico is an estimated $2.4 billion industry, which is an invaluable addition to USA’s GDP especially given the current recession. Additionally, if the demand for fish does not reduce, the supply of fish from other waters nearby will need to increase.
There is also no guarantee that any fish has not come from the Gulf of Mexico and accumulated many of the poisons already. Many fish, especially deep-sea dwelling fish, will travel up to 200 miles for feeding and reproduction. They could have become caught in passages of oil and chemical disbursant while migrating through the area.
In addition to the issue of caught fish containing human-toxic substances, there is also the significant issue of overfishing to contend with. Overfishing occurs when the commercial fishing operation in an area catches the fish faster than the fish can replenish their population. This is happening globally already and will only be made worse if the same number of fish are required from fewer and less-dense fishing areas. According to overfishing.org, almost 80% of the world’s fisheries are fully to over-exploited, depleted or in a state of collapse, and over 90% of the stocks of large predatory fish stocks are already gone. Who can tell what the full impact will be when the ocean ecology is already under stress, and we increase the stress by overfishing from the surrounding areas.
It is not only the fish that are affected by overfishing, sea birds and mammals both eat fish, and as the number of edible fish become harder to find, these animals are being increasingly caught in fishing hauls, killed and discarded.
So while those of us who are not yet affected by the disaster in the USA can sit back and watch everything unfold, it will be our fish and sea animals that will be increasingly removed from the oceans to make up for the shortfall in US fishing.
In my opinion, the only healthy and ethical thing to do about the seafood issue is to completely stop eating fish and their byproducts. We need to look into getting our EFAs from other sources such as flaxseeds, spirulina, chlorella and phytoplankton. Fortunately fish do not create their own EFAs, but instead break down the EFAs in the microalgae food that they consume. Humans are able to do the same, and so we can replace fish in the diet with supplemental sources of EFA. I have previously used fish oil for DHA supplementation, but I am going to try out some vegan alternatives.
Learn more about your health. Stop by Petra Smirnoff’s site where you can find out all about the healthiest diets so that you can lose weight and feel great.