The environmental group Defenders of Wildlife have found that many imported cans of tuna have mercury levels higher than the U.S. federal safety limit. The highest levels of mercury were found in tuna from Ecuador and Mexico.
Exceeding the Limit
Defenders of Wildlife had a laboratory test more than 150 cans of tuna from Ecuador, Mexico, Costa Rica, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and the United States. The analysis showed that tuna from Latin America had the highest mercury levels, sometimes greatly exceeding the government limit of 1.0 parts per million. This was true even for light tuna, which the FDA considers to be low in mercury.
Learning Disabilities and Other Damage
If you still enjoy eating light canned tuna despite the inherent dangers, you might want to reconsider, but only if you value your health. It appears that half of the canned tuna products in your grocery store are imported and, as a result, could contain almost twice the mercury that was initially thought to be present.
Uncontaminated fish is one of nature's ideal foods, but nearly all fish available for commercial sale now contains dangerous amounts of mercury. It's a particular problem for tuna, as well as swordfish and shark, because mercury has the highest accumulation in older fish and predatory species, which consume the mercury present in all the fish they eat.
Take a look at the online mercury calculator at Got Mercury.org; it is a useful resource that will help you make an informed choice about what fish you eat.
Personally, I rarely eat fish, unless it is Vital Choice salmon from Alaska that is the wild Pacific species and I know is virtually free of mercury as I have tested it many times. Heck, my mouth was loaded with mercury amalgams for 25 years before I woke up to the truth of this poison and had them replaced with plastic composites.
The last thing I need to do is expose myself needlessly to mercury. Many people order fish at a restaurant thinking that it is a healthy choice, not realizing that most restaurant fish are farm raised and are fraught with their own problems, plus are typically loaded with mercury and other toxins.
Mercury binds itself to the sulfur proteins in your brain, causing damage to the microtubules that nourish your brain cells. Many people expose themselves to mercury daily, whether by eating contaminated fish, having it put into their teeth in amalgam dental fillings, or getting it injected into their body in the form of the flu vaccine.
To safeguard your health and that of your family, please take a look at previous articles we have run on the subject, such as Learn How Mercury is Affecting You and the Ones You Love. It's especially important for you to read these if you are experiencing any of these mercury toxicity symptoms:
Those are just some of the signs indicating that you may be suffering from metal poisoning -- a toxic accumulation of heavy metals in the soft tissues of the body.
If you are concerned about potential mercury toxicity, numerous research projects in the United States and Europe indicate that chlorella, a type of green algae, can aid the body in the breakdown of metallic toxins such as mercury. This detoxification of heavy metals and other chemical toxins in the blood will take three to six months to build up enough to begin this process.
Aside from mercury, fish also contain many other toxins, including PCBs, radioactive strontium and metals like lead, chromium, arsenic and cadmium. I suggest you avoid eating fish unless you know it has been laboratory-tested and proven to be toxin-free.
If you want to get the nutritional benefits of fish without the toxins, take a high-quality krill oil daily. The emphasis is on high quality; you don't want to cut corners and buy a bargain basement omega-3 product and risk not receiving all the important benefits omega-3 fats provide.