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News- Page 14
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Mercury : Can the mercury contained in some seafood harm a developing fetus?
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Posted by Sylvia on Tuesday, February 03, 2004 (16:48:57)
ENN.com 03/02/2004
Methyl mercury — emitted by smokestacks and released to the environment from common household products like old thermometers — is a persistent heavy metal that ends up in rivers, lakes, and oceans and accumulates in the tissues of fish and animals, including people.
"Just one-seventieth of a teaspoon of atmospheric mercury can contaminate a 20-acre lake for a year," said Michael Bender, executive director of the Vermont-based Mercury Policy Project.
According to a 2001 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, one in 10 American women of childbearing age is at risk for having a baby born with neurological problems due to mercury exposure; this means at least 375,000 babies a year are at risk.
Most states and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have issued advisories about eating fish that may have high levels of mercury in their tissues.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that women can safely eat 12 ounces per week of cooked fish. A typical serving size of fish is from three to six ounces.
However, the FDA advises pregnant and nursing women and women of childbearing age who may become pregnant to not eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish, which contain high levels of methyl mercury.
In December 2003, the FDA released test results showing that the Albacore "white" canned tuna has three times the mercury levels as the "light" tuna.
"FDA's tests confirm earlier findings that white tuna has far more mercury than light," said Bender. "Yet inexplicitly, the FDA still refuses to warn women and kids to limit canned tuna consumption — like 12 states have already done — even after their food advisory committee recommended this over a year ago."
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Mercury : Safety of flu vaccine questioned
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Posted by Sylvia on Tuesday, February 03, 2004 (10:30:44)
WTHR
By Tom Walker
Washington D.C. - It has been a nagging issue for a number of years. Can children be hurt by the mercury-derivative Thimerosal, which has been used as a preservative in a number of vaccines?
Barbara Loe Fisher with the Vaccine Info Center says there is little dispute that mercury is something to be avoided. "Mercury is a known neurotoxin, it's known to be toxic to the brain."
A suspected link between Thimerosal and autism in children has mobilized parents and some lawmakers, including Indiana's Dan Burton, who believes mercury-containing vaccines had a frightening impact on his own grandson. "He flapped his arms, ran around banging his head against the wall, lost his ability to communicate."
Flu vaccines now being given children do contain varying amounts of Thimerosal. Is it dangerous?
Pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly and Company, which once made the ingredient, argue the most recent evidence says no. Lilly Chairman Sidney Taurel says, "Two major studies which have come out showing that there was no evidence of correlation between autism and Thimerosal."
Says the US Centers for Disease Control, "There is no convincing evidence of harm caused by the small doses of Thimerosal in vaccines."
But some critics remain unconvinced.
Florida Congressman Dave Weldon, himself a doctor, has proposed banning Thimerosal from all vaccines. "I have two kids, a five-year-old and a 17-year-old and I would not give either of them those vaccines that contain mercury."
While the government says there is no risk from Thimerosal in flu vaccines, it says some do contain less of it than others to the point they are considered preservative-free.
The downside is those vaccines may be the hardest to find.
The CDC has information on which flu vaccines are lowest in mercury.
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Mercury : Parents Increasingly Question Vaccine Wisdom
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Posted by Sylvia on Tuesday, February 03, 2004 (10:26:56)
Reuters 20/01/2004
By Maggie Fox
WASHINGTON - The posting on an Internet Web site sounded plaintive. Marianna Toce Gerstein wondered whether as a pregnant woman she should get a flu shot.
Although influenza vaccines are recommended for pregnant women, she was worried because she knows the vaccine contains a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal. She fears it could injure her unborn child.
"Has anyone else struggled with this?" she asked.
Gerstein's gynecologist told her to get the vaccine but her other doctor, an internist, told her not to take the risk with her baby's health. Gerstein is aware of the advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Pregnant women in their second and third trimesters should get the shot because their immune systems are suppressed.
But she does not want to blindly follow anyone's advice.
She is not alone. A survey published this month suggests a growing number of U.S. parents are beginning to question either the need for vaccines for their children, or the need to follow the recommended schedule of multiple shots between the ages of 3 months and 3 years.
"We found that a large number of both pediatricians and family physicians had experienced at least one parent vaccine refusal in the last year," Dr. Gary Freed of the University of Michigan said in a telephone interview.
The survey of nearly 1,500 doctors found that 93 percent of pediatricians and 60 percent of family physicians had seen at least one parent who refused a vaccine for his or her child in the past year.
WORRIES ABOUT SIDE-EFFECTS
Writing in the January issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Freed and colleagues said 19 percent of doctors reported the parents feared the vaccines could affect their babies' immune system.
Sixteen percent said the parents wondered whether children really needed all the vaccines recommended by the CDC.
"A growing number of parental concerns were relating to unproven or disproven concerns about childhood immunization such as whether mercury was harmful or the now disproven speculation about an association between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella vaccine) and autism," Freed said.
The CDC is clear: Vaccines save lives, are extremely safe and are still necessary.
For instance, measles makes as many as 40 million people around the world sick every year and kills 745,000, according to the World Health Organization.
"If vaccinations were stopped, each year about 2.7 million measles deaths worldwide could be expected," the CDC says.
In Britain a growing anti-vaccine movement means just 84 percent of children are immunized against measles by age 2 -- a level that leaves the population vulnerable to an epidemic. Last year, 308 cases of measles were reported in Britain.
Gerstein appreciates the benefits of vaccines, but says no one can tell her the risk-benefit trade-off of getting herself vaccinated against flu. Adding to the confusion are recent Food and Drug Administration advisories that some tuna contains high levels of mercury and that pregnant women should limit how much they eat.
FISH WARNINGS
"You see signs around the doctor's office all the time telling you not to eat (certain) fish," she said in a telephone interview. "And at same time there is this whole thing with thimerosal and vaccines."
Vaccine experts were confused, too -- so much so that the Environmental Protection Agency bases its limits for mercury exposure on what is known about damage done by methyl mercury contamination.
Methyl mercury is the form found in fish. But the mercury in thimerosal is ethyl mercury.
"These two molecules are very different," said Dr. Paul Offitt, an immunization expert at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
"They are just biologically very different agents. The problem is the word mercury is at end of both of them and there is no way that mercury ever sounds good."
But Offitt and colleagues at the National Partnership for Immunization recently completed a review of mercury studies and concluded that the very small dose of mercury contained in thimerosal-preserved vaccines is cleared by the body before it can do any damage.
"The mercury ... from thimerosal -- it is eliminated from the body much more quickly than methyl mercury," said Dr. Polly Sager of the NPI and a researcher at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
In any case thimerosal has been removed from all childhood vaccines.
Gerstein was relieved to hear about the group's findings but is still worried that she could not find any details about the risks and benefits of a pregnant woman getting a flu shot. She ended up not getting one, and plans to wash her hands frequently and avoid situations where she may get flu.
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Mercury : Study Examines Which Cans of Tuna have More Mercury
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Posted by Sylvia on Tuesday, February 03, 2004 (00:51:26)
I Village.com 31/01/2004
Apparently not all cans of tuna are alike. Mercury levels in canned albacore tuna are three times greater than in chunk or light tuna, according to a recent state Health Department study.
Canned light tuna is usually labeled "chunk light" or "solid light." While cans of "white" tuna contain only albacore, light tuna can include a mix of several types of the fish.
The study looked at 289 cans of tuna from 83 grocery stores around the state. Albacore tuna contained an average of 215 parts per billion (ppb) of mercury, compared with an average of 57ppb in light tuna.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates canned tuna, takes action when mercury levels in the edible parts of fish reach 1 part per million.
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Mercury : Mercury scare in the Arctic
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Posted by Sylvia on Tuesday, February 03, 2004 (00:45:16)
The Norway Post 01/02/2004
An increasing amount of mercury is brought to the Arctic through pollution from all over the world. The poisonous heavy metal is easily taken up into the food chain.
Scientists are now sounding the alarm, Aftenposten writes.
Health tests among the indigenous peoples of the northern areas (such as Greenland and Canada) already show damage caused by mercury.
Children in groups which consume large amounts of seal and whale have high blood pressure and difficulty achieving motor skills.
The reason why the mercury collects in the Arctic has up to now been a mystery. However, after three years of monitoring at Ny- Aalesund on Spitzbergen, scientists at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) now believe they have the answer.
The mercury follows the air currents towards the north from practically all over the world, among other places from Asia, where this hevy metal comes from coal fired power stations.
The NILU report on mercury will be published next week, the newspaper writes.
The Arcitc Council has for many years followed the development of environmental poisons and heavy metals in the Arctic. Secretary General Lars Otto Reiersen of the Arctic Monitoring Asessment Programme (AMAP), says the amount of mercury in the Northern regions is increasing and that this is disquieting.
The Norwegian Polar Insstitute will now analyse the contents of mercury in reindeer and partridge on Svalbard.
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