Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
harmful levels. An open question is whether some fish could
have higher levels of some PAHs that could not be detected
by smelling it.
In response to the BP catastrophe, the FDA developed risk
criteria and established thresholds for allowable levels of
PAH contaminants in Gulf Coast seafood. Federal and state
laboratories tested over 10,000 fish and shrimp for traces of
certain PAHs from oil to be sure they were far below levels
that could make anyone sick before commercial fishing was
allowed to resume. However, some scientists, led by Miriam
Rotkin-Ellman, disagreed with the levels that the FDA set
because they failed to account for the increased sensitivity of
fetuses and children. The scientists thought that the FDA also
did not use appropriate seafood consumption rates, did not
include all relevant health end points, and did not include pro-
tective estimates of exposure duration and acceptable risk. For
two particular PAHs, benzo[
a
]pyrene and naphthalene, these
scientists felt that safe levels should have been set far below
the level that the FDA set, and that according to that lower
standard up to 53% of shrimp samples were above levels of
concern for pregnant women who eat a lot of seafood. It may be
that the government was anxious to reopen the fishery sooner
rather than later in order to reduce the already-devastating
economic effects of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe to the
fishing industry in the Gulf.
Can dioxin contamination be found in seafood?
Dioxins and furans are among the most toxic chemicals, and
they biomagnify up food chains. The amount of data on diox-
ins and dioxin-like PCBs in food is very limited and analytical
measurements of these chemicals are difficult and very expen-
sive. The greatest concentrations in food appear to be in fresh-
water fish. However some marine fish that are rich in lipids
can accumulate worrisome levels. For example, 50 samples of
Greenland halibut were analyzed for dioxins and dioxin-like
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