Friday Quote: Fish Consumption Rate
How much fish do you eat?
Let me give you a brief rundown of why I'm asking: Washington is trying to find an official fish-consumption rate to replace outdated numbers. Due to contaminated waters, fish can harbor toxics, like mercury, PCBs and dioxins. The real question should be how much of these chemicals are ingested by humans? Enter the fish consumption rate. If the number is high, those responsible will be on the hook for cleaning the waterways since people might be eating more fish than is safe.
There was a negative editorial in the Spokesman last weekend about how this "rule-making" keeps bureaucracts bellies full so as a response, I wanted to share an excerpt from our Spokane Riverkeeper's story about the fish consumption rate in the Huffington Post:
Washington State may be called the Evergreen State, but the state's rich heritage of fish and shellfish is critical to our economy, culture and health. From tribal subsistence fishing in Eastern Washington to a thriving shellfish industry in Puget Sound; from sport fishing on the mighty Columbia River, to legendary steelhead trout of the Olympic Peninsula, fish and those who thrive on them are as much a part of Washington as all our fir trees and glaciers combined.
But there is a hidden danger in these fish, and right now we have the opportunity to make sure that fish and shellfish are healthy for future generations to eat.
Even a quick glance at our state's water quality standards for toxic pollution shows a gross inequality between the weak limits on toxic pollution and the strong value of we place on serving fish for our families. Washington currently has some of the weakest limits on toxic pollution in the nation, in part because we use a low estimate of how much fish people eat every day.
The problem is this: in a state where people have subsisted primarily on salmon and seafood for thousands of years, the state assumes people only eat a cracker-sized portion of fish per day. 6.5 grams, to be exact.
Why does a low fish consumption estimate matter? Because each of our pollution control regulations is tied to human health, and the human health threshold for cleanup or control is tied to the consumption rate.
