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Dr. Bortrum

 

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02/04/2004

To Eat or Not to Eat?

After last week’s column on food pyramids, notably Walter
Willett’s Healthy Eating Pyramid, I’m hooked on food. One of
the foods that Willett and many others recommend is fish,
especially fish with high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, which
protect against heart disease. On the other hand, there’s concern
about mercury and other toxins concentrating in fish such as tuna
and salmon that are at or near the top of the food chain. As a
result, we’re being advised to exercise discretion about the
amounts and choices of fish that we consume.

Looking back, I certainly wasn’t limiting my fish intake when
lunching in the cafeteria at UMDNJ Robert Wood Johnson
Medical School, where I went after retiring from Bell Labs in
1989. For a decade or so, I averaged some 3-4 tuna, lettuce and
tomato on whole-wheat sandwiches a week. At the time, I
thought I was being quite virtuous in choosing such a healthy
combination (you’re right, what about the mayo?). Then came
all the publicity about mercury contamination.

I was encouraged by an item in the article by Brad Lemley in
Discover magazine mentioned in last week’s column. The article
cited a recent study involving pregnant women in the Seychelles
in the Indian Ocean. The women ate an average of 12 fish meals
a week without apparent harm to themselves or their children.
Gary Myers of the University of Rochester Medical Center is
quoted as saying they had found no evidence that the low levels
of mercury in the fish were harmful.

What about salmon? I can still taste the scrumptious freshly
caught salmon I had in a restaurant in Vancouver over a decade
ago. Today, most of the salmon we buy at our supermarkets or
get served in restaurants is of the farmed variety. Last month, a
study on toxins in wild and farmed salmon was published in the
January 9 issue of Science. The article, “Global Assessment of
Organic Contaminants in Farmed Salmon” has six authors, the
lead author being Ronald Hites at Indiana University.

The study drew immediate media attention and caused a huge
controversy between environmental groups and the farmed
salmon industry. Some idea of the bitterness of the controversy
may be gathered from a quote I found on the Salmon of the
Americas (SOTA) Web site. SOTA is a salmon industry trade
organization, as is Scottish Quality Salmon (SQS), a body in
Scotland that deals with quality assurance for the Scottish salmon
industry. SQS is quoted to the effect that the research published
in Science appears to be “deliberately misleading in the advice it
gives on farmed salmon consumption.”

What caused all this controversy? The researchers analyzed
salmon from Europe and from North and South America for 14
organochlorine compounds, taking special note of PCBs
(polychlorinated biphenyls) and the pesticides dieldrin and
toxaphene. These three compounds have been correlated with a
risk of liver and other cancers. The study was initiated and
funded by the Environmental Division of the Pew Charitable
Trusts. As a child, I often heard mention of “the Pews”, typically
in a derogatory sense. A Pew and his sons founded and/or ran
the Sun Oil Company and, in my parents’ view, typified the big
money interests. My parents were of the far left political
persuasion, voting for Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate
for president. They would have been surprised to see the Pew
Trust supporting such environmental studies.

But I digress. This study was no small endeavor. Salmon fillets
were purchased from supermarkets in 16 North American and
European cities including New York, Paris, Oslo, London,
Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, Vancouver, Toronto, Oslo,
Seattle, etc. The total was 144 filets. They also obtained and
filleted 594 individual whole salmons from wholesalers. The
filets were assembled in 246 composite samples for analysis,
each sample consisting of three fillets from a given retailer or
location. They also analyzed 13 samples of salmon feed from
different outlets of the two major feed companies.

From what I’ve read, the accuracy of the data presented in
Science does not seem to be in question. It’s the analysis of the
data that has caused the violent reaction in the salmon industry.
The data show that the amounts of toxins, notably the PCBs,
toxaphene and dieldrin, are significantly higher in the farmed and
supermarket salmon than in the wild salmon. There is some
scatter in the data but, assuming the validity of the chemical
analyses, certain species of wild salmon contain up to about 10 to
20 times less toxins than the farmed variety. It depends on the
toxin and the source.

Now comes the controversial analysis. The researchers took the
results and came up with a graph that appears to provide
guidance as to the maximum number of meals of each source of
salmon that one should eat per month to minimize the cancer
risk. The controversy lies in the choice of the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines that purportedly represent
the upper limits of consumption of the toxins to keep the added
risk of cancer to 1 in 100,000. The EPA guidelines are much
more stringent than the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
guidelines for sale of the salmon. Depending on where I look,
the FDA figures are 40 or more times higher than the EPA limits.

What are the study recommendations? You’re lucky if you
frequent supermarkets in Denver or New Orleans. You can have
two salmon meals a month. Hey, that’s better than buying it in
Frankfurt or getting farmed fish from Scotland, where you can’t
even have half a meal a month. (Now you know why Scottish
Quality Salmon is so disturbed by the study.) On the other hand,
if you get wild chum salmon from the British Columbia/Alaska
area you can pig out on 8 meals a month. Choose wild pink or
Coho salmon and you’re down in the 2-4 meals a month range,
depending on the source. In general, the farmed fish from
Europe is more contaminated than that from North America and
South America, notably Chile.

What to do? The American Heart Association recommends we
eat 168 to 336 grams of fish a week to get the benefits of those
omega-3 fatty acids. The study’s recommended portion of
farmed salmon from Scotland is only 55 grams per month! Not
surprisingly, the average contaminant levels of PCBs, dieldrin
and toxaphene in the salmon feed from Scotland are higher than
the average levels in Chile and in British Columbia. Obviously,
there will be a hard look at the feed ingredients. If you accept
the study’s recommendations, it seems prudent to get wild
salmon if available or switch to other fish. Of course, such an
extensive study probably hasn’t been done on the choices you
select. Excuse me, it’s time for lunch and my wife tells me I’m
having toast with cream cheese and, naturally, smoked salmon!
………………

I’m back and my lunch was delicious! I was consoled after
returning to the SOTA Web site. In an article dated the day after
the appearance of the Science article, Michael Gallo is quoted as
saying that PCBs are in all salmon and that the difference
between 5 ppb (part per billion) and 30 ppb is “meaningless”.
Gallo is a prominent cancer researcher at Robert Wood Johnson
Medical School, where I ate all that tuna fish. According to the
article, Gallo was also involved in coming up with the EPA
guidelines.

Furthermore, on the Web site of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) I found a Reuters article by Merritt McKinney that
includes a statement by Jeffrey Foran, the second author of the
salmon study. Foran, who is the head of a Wisconsin-based
group known as Citizens for a Better Environment, says that
people should not interpret the study as a message to stop eating
fish. He says the study was to measure contaminant levels in
salmon, not to develop guidelines for fish consumption. I’m
confused. A chart showing the maximum number of meals of
salmon to avoid increased risk of cancer sure seems like
guidelines to me.

Well, having just come through one minor and one major bout
with cancer, I’m not going to worry about salmon. Actually, I’ll
be in Florida for a while and, instead of salmon, I plan to pig out
on grouper sandwiches. And if I run across a study on toxins in
grouper, I’ll put it aside until my return to New Jersey.

Allen F. Bortrum



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-02/04/2004-      
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Dr. Bortrum

02/04/2004

To Eat or Not to Eat?

After last week’s column on food pyramids, notably Walter
Willett’s Healthy Eating Pyramid, I’m hooked on food. One of
the foods that Willett and many others recommend is fish,
especially fish with high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, which
protect against heart disease. On the other hand, there’s concern
about mercury and other toxins concentrating in fish such as tuna
and salmon that are at or near the top of the food chain. As a
result, we’re being advised to exercise discretion about the
amounts and choices of fish that we consume.

Looking back, I certainly wasn’t limiting my fish intake when
lunching in the cafeteria at UMDNJ Robert Wood Johnson
Medical School, where I went after retiring from Bell Labs in
1989. For a decade or so, I averaged some 3-4 tuna, lettuce and
tomato on whole-wheat sandwiches a week. At the time, I
thought I was being quite virtuous in choosing such a healthy
combination (you’re right, what about the mayo?). Then came
all the publicity about mercury contamination.

I was encouraged by an item in the article by Brad Lemley in
Discover magazine mentioned in last week’s column. The article
cited a recent study involving pregnant women in the Seychelles
in the Indian Ocean. The women ate an average of 12 fish meals
a week without apparent harm to themselves or their children.
Gary Myers of the University of Rochester Medical Center is
quoted as saying they had found no evidence that the low levels
of mercury in the fish were harmful.

What about salmon? I can still taste the scrumptious freshly
caught salmon I had in a restaurant in Vancouver over a decade
ago. Today, most of the salmon we buy at our supermarkets or
get served in restaurants is of the farmed variety. Last month, a
study on toxins in wild and farmed salmon was published in the
January 9 issue of Science. The article, “Global Assessment of
Organic Contaminants in Farmed Salmon” has six authors, the
lead author being Ronald Hites at Indiana University.

The study drew immediate media attention and caused a huge
controversy between environmental groups and the farmed
salmon industry. Some idea of the bitterness of the controversy
may be gathered from a quote I found on the Salmon of the
Americas (SOTA) Web site. SOTA is a salmon industry trade
organization, as is Scottish Quality Salmon (SQS), a body in
Scotland that deals with quality assurance for the Scottish salmon
industry. SQS is quoted to the effect that the research published
in Science appears to be “deliberately misleading in the advice it
gives on farmed salmon consumption.”

What caused all this controversy? The researchers analyzed
salmon from Europe and from North and South America for 14
organochlorine compounds, taking special note of PCBs
(polychlorinated biphenyls) and the pesticides dieldrin and
toxaphene. These three compounds have been correlated with a
risk of liver and other cancers. The study was initiated and
funded by the Environmental Division of the Pew Charitable
Trusts. As a child, I often heard mention of “the Pews”, typically
in a derogatory sense. A Pew and his sons founded and/or ran
the Sun Oil Company and, in my parents’ view, typified the big
money interests. My parents were of the far left political
persuasion, voting for Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate
for president. They would have been surprised to see the Pew
Trust supporting such environmental studies.

But I digress. This study was no small endeavor. Salmon fillets
were purchased from supermarkets in 16 North American and
European cities including New York, Paris, Oslo, London,
Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, Vancouver, Toronto, Oslo,
Seattle, etc. The total was 144 filets. They also obtained and
filleted 594 individual whole salmons from wholesalers. The
filets were assembled in 246 composite samples for analysis,
each sample consisting of three fillets from a given retailer or
location. They also analyzed 13 samples of salmon feed from
different outlets of the two major feed companies.

From what I’ve read, the accuracy of the data presented in
Science does not seem to be in question. It’s the analysis of the
data that has caused the violent reaction in the salmon industry.
The data show that the amounts of toxins, notably the PCBs,
toxaphene and dieldrin, are significantly higher in the farmed and
supermarket salmon than in the wild salmon. There is some
scatter in the data but, assuming the validity of the chemical
analyses, certain species of wild salmon contain up to about 10 to
20 times less toxins than the farmed variety. It depends on the
toxin and the source.

Now comes the controversial analysis. The researchers took the
results and came up with a graph that appears to provide
guidance as to the maximum number of meals of each source of
salmon that one should eat per month to minimize the cancer
risk. The controversy lies in the choice of the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines that purportedly represent
the upper limits of consumption of the toxins to keep the added
risk of cancer to 1 in 100,000. The EPA guidelines are much
more stringent than the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
guidelines for sale of the salmon. Depending on where I look,
the FDA figures are 40 or more times higher than the EPA limits.

What are the study recommendations? You’re lucky if you
frequent supermarkets in Denver or New Orleans. You can have
two salmon meals a month. Hey, that’s better than buying it in
Frankfurt or getting farmed fish from Scotland, where you can’t
even have half a meal a month. (Now you know why Scottish
Quality Salmon is so disturbed by the study.) On the other hand,
if you get wild chum salmon from the British Columbia/Alaska
area you can pig out on 8 meals a month. Choose wild pink or
Coho salmon and you’re down in the 2-4 meals a month range,
depending on the source. In general, the farmed fish from
Europe is more contaminated than that from North America and
South America, notably Chile.

What to do? The American Heart Association recommends we
eat 168 to 336 grams of fish a week to get the benefits of those
omega-3 fatty acids. The study’s recommended portion of
farmed salmon from Scotland is only 55 grams per month! Not
surprisingly, the average contaminant levels of PCBs, dieldrin
and toxaphene in the salmon feed from Scotland are higher than
the average levels in Chile and in British Columbia. Obviously,
there will be a hard look at the feed ingredients. If you accept
the study’s recommendations, it seems prudent to get wild
salmon if available or switch to other fish. Of course, such an
extensive study probably hasn’t been done on the choices you
select. Excuse me, it’s time for lunch and my wife tells me I’m
having toast with cream cheese and, naturally, smoked salmon!
………………

I’m back and my lunch was delicious! I was consoled after
returning to the SOTA Web site. In an article dated the day after
the appearance of the Science article, Michael Gallo is quoted as
saying that PCBs are in all salmon and that the difference
between 5 ppb (part per billion) and 30 ppb is “meaningless”.
Gallo is a prominent cancer researcher at Robert Wood Johnson
Medical School, where I ate all that tuna fish. According to the
article, Gallo was also involved in coming up with the EPA
guidelines.

Furthermore, on the Web site of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) I found a Reuters article by Merritt McKinney that
includes a statement by Jeffrey Foran, the second author of the
salmon study. Foran, who is the head of a Wisconsin-based
group known as Citizens for a Better Environment, says that
people should not interpret the study as a message to stop eating
fish. He says the study was to measure contaminant levels in
salmon, not to develop guidelines for fish consumption. I’m
confused. A chart showing the maximum number of meals of
salmon to avoid increased risk of cancer sure seems like
guidelines to me.

Well, having just come through one minor and one major bout
with cancer, I’m not going to worry about salmon. Actually, I’ll
be in Florida for a while and, instead of salmon, I plan to pig out
on grouper sandwiches. And if I run across a study on toxins in
grouper, I’ll put it aside until my return to New Jersey.

Allen F. Bortrum