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 a huge disaster that will have a long-term effect on the environment.
Even if the well is successfully closed soon there is still the issue of the remaining pollution and its impact on sea-living species (and inevitably on human health). We will have a significant clean-up job on our hands, and the pollution will remain for some time.
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 examine when we decide whether we are comfortable eating fish and shellfish: firstly what types of toxins could find their way into seafood, and secondly what would be the effects of overfishing in the remaining good fishing locations to make up for the shortfall in the supply of fish?
In terms of toxins, we have a number of different substances building up in fish that are living in oil affected waters. Firstly we have crude oil and secondly we have the dispersant being used, currently Corexit 9500. Crude oil contains both mercury and lead, which are obviously highly poisonous heavy metals. Crude oil also includes benzene, toluene and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), all of which cause cancer. While scientists claim that PAH does not accumulate in fish, they concede that it does accumulate in shellfish. The dispersant Corexit 9500 is a highly poisonous substance, 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 is already resulting in degenerative illnesses (typically targeting the brain) in humans and malformed foetuses in pregnant mothers. While mercury will cause degeneration of health in adults, it is significantly more concentrated when consumed by children or accumumated in a foetus and is suspected to be a leading cause of autism, chromosomal defects (such as 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 exact contents of Corexit 9500 are a trade secret, but it is already known to be very poisonous, affecting children most of all due to their smaller size. Its use in such quantities and at such oceanic depths has never before been tested, however it is known that Corexit 9500 increases in toxicity as it heats up, and that oil tends to increase the temperature of water. At this time over 600,000 gallons of Corexit 9500 have been utilised in an attempt to clean up the oil spill. Expected health effects are respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders.
Clearly the fish and shellfish 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, so all should be fine right?
Well unfortunately 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. Not only is fishing a good source of income for the government (via taxation) but people are currently eating those fish and so assuming the demand remains, the supply of fish for food will have to come from someplace else.
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.
Overfishing also directly impacts the animals and birds who reside in a particular area. As food becomes sparse, ocean mammals and birds will either go hungry or spend more time in fishing waters trying to catch fish to eat. These animals can then be caught in the fishing nets themselves, and if unable to free themselves will be killed and then discarded from the fishing haul.
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 way that we can both avoid the health issues from eating fish, and take an ethical stance against overfishing in our own backyards is to completely avoid eating fish or their byproducts. Lean protein can be easily obtained by land animals and plants, and so consumption of fish is not needed. 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. There are a number of good supplements that are already being manufactured for vegans who wish to increase their consumption EFAs. Personally I have switched from using fish oil capsules as supplements, to marine phytoplanton supplementation.
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.