The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reassess its acceptable contaminant levels for Gulf of Mexico seafood after revealing that Gulf Coast residents eat far more fish than the agency acknowledges.
The Washington, D.C.-based environmental advocacy group surveyed 547 residents along coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida from August to October and found that their seafood-consumption rates are three to 12 times higher than the national average, which the FDA uses to determine if contaminant levels pose a risk to human health. The agency estimates that consumers eat an average of two fish meals and one shrimp meal per week.
As a result, the FDA is underestimating the risk posed by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Gulf seafood and may be failing to adequately protect Gulf Coast residents, according to Dr. Gina Solomon, an NRDC senior scientist. “We don’t know exactly how much of the PAHs are in all that Gulf shrimp,” she said in her blog.
The PAHs, which are carcinogenic, originate from the roughly 200 million gallons of crude oil and 2 million gallons of dispersant dumped into the Gulf after the Deepwater Horizon blowout.
At an American Chemical Society seminar in August, researchers emphasized that Gulf seafood has not been found to contain levels of oil or chemicals that would be of concern to human health. And in October, scientists with the FDA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said all Gulf seafood samples tested for dispersants are clean and safe to eat.
But in an 8 December letter to Donald Kraemer, acting deputy director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the NRDC called on the agency to expedite reassessment of its acceptable contaminant levels for Gulf seafood. The letter was signed by 36 Gulf Coast groups.
In response, the FDA issued a statement that said it "will review the NRDC's survey to determine if it is suitable as a source of consumption data and, if so, whether it would impact any of the safety conclusions drawn by the states and the federal government,” reported the Times-Picayune newspaper in Louisiana.
“Other agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization have developed guidelines that specify the need to account for local seafood consumption rates and the increased risks to vulnerable populations such as children,” said Solomon in her blog.
“The FDA, in contrast, has none and has ignored the guidelines established by other agencies,” she added. “In fact, the underestimates we found in our survey are a symptom of a larger problem. FDA has been ignoring scientific findings about hazards of chemicals in foods, conducting inadequate monitoring of contaminant levels and failing to adequately protect vulnerable populations.”
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