BIOACCUMULATION AND BIOMAGNIFICATION - Marine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Know - page 153

and other contaminants had lower scores on several measures
of memory and learning.
While none of these studies are a “smoking gun,” they do
provide reasons to avoid eating fish with high PCB levels.
Since PCBs accumulate in fat, some procedures for prepar-
ing the fish can be useful. The amount of PCBs in fish may be
significantly lower after cooking because lipids, along with
lipophilic compounds like PCBs, tend to be removed from
the fish during cooking. Before cooking one should remove
the skin, the fat (found along the back, sides, and belly),
internal organs, and the tomalley of lobster and the mus-
tard of crabs, where these chemicals are likely to accumu-
late. When cooking, the fat should be drained away. Frying
fish seals in the pollutants in the fish's fat, while grilling or
broiling allows the fat to drain away. This can remove 20 to
30% of the PCBs. To smoke fish, it should first be filleted and
the skin removed.
Organic chemicals associated with petroleum (PAHs)
can also accumulate in seafood if it is exposed to the oil.
The types and properties of oil influence whether seafood
is contaminated. Crude oils and the products derived from
them are complex and variable mixtures of hydrocarbons of
different molecular weights and structures. Once exposed
to oil, an organism becomes contaminated to the extent that
it takes up and retains petroleum compounds. The BP oil
spill of 2010 contaminated a very productive fishery with
PAHs that accumulate in seafood, and are carcinogens and
developmental toxicants. Seafood can be analyzed chemi-
cally for these contaminants, which is very time-consuming
and expensive. Another way that seafood can be considered
unfit for consumption, according to the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is if it smells
or tastes like petroleum; this is known as taint. A product
tainted with petroleum is not permitted to be sold as food
under US law. Petroleum taint in and of itself is not necessar-
ily harmful, and may be present even when PAHs are below