Stop Eating Fish Immediately! (the Effects Of The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill)
If you care about your health and care about the planet then you should stop eating fish and seafood right now. There are very real health and ethical reasons to do so.
Why? Well, because the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is substantial.
Even if the well is successfully closed soon there is still the issue of the remaining pollution and its impact on sea-living species (and inevitably on human health). We will have a significant clean-up job on our hands, and the pollution will remain for some time.
Do not ignore the issues because the US government has disallowed fishing in the water that is being directly affected by the oil spill. We are not ‘off the hook’ so to speak. What happens under the surface of the water is not obvious to the eye of a casual observer.
We have two serious issues to examine when we decide whether we are comfortable eating fish and shellfish: firstly what types of toxins could find their way into seafood, and secondly what would be the effects of overfishing in the remaining good fishing locations to make up for the shortfall in the supply of fish?
Due to the oil spill there are a number of different substances polluting the Gulf of Mexico area and surrounding waters. Firstly we have crude oil and secondly we have the dispersant being used, currently Corexit 9500. Constituents of crude oil include both mercury and lead which are two heavy metals that are highly poisonous to humans. Crude oil also includes benzene, toluene and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), all of which cause cancer. Scientists do claim that PAH does not accumulate in fish, but concede that it does accumulate in shellfish. The Corexit 9500 dispersant is a highly toxic chemical, roughly four times more poisonous than oil.
Heavy metals such as lead and mercury cycle through a fish’s respiratory system, eventually accumulating in its body. As some many larger fish are predatory, they receive both the environmental load of toxins, plus the accumulation of toxins from the smaller fish. This pattern continues up the food chain until the largest fish (those that are prized as being for human consumption) have significant accumulations of heavy metals. For this reason, a percentage increase in the heavy metal load due to the environment of the fish will have greater than the percentage increase in heavy metal accumulation in large predatory fish.
Mercury is already resulting in degenerative illnesses (typically targeting the brain) in humans and malformed foetuses in pregnant mothers. While mercury will cause degeneration of health in adults, it is significantly more concentrated when consumed by children or accumumated in a foetus and is suspected to be a leading cause of autism, chromosomal defects (such as Down’s syndrome) and other intellectual impairments.
Lead affects the brain, nervous system, reproductive system and kidneys. In laboratory tests on animals, no minimum quantity of lead has been considered a safe dose; even the smallest quantities have had a harmful effect. As with mercury, lead has its greatest impact on the health of small children due to being so concentrated. It has been associated with low IQ, slow growth and hearing defects in children.
Corexit 9500, the chemical dispersant used by BP to try to break up the oil from the surface of the water is known to be both more toxic and also less effective than other chemical disbursants, requiring a heavier application. Corexit 9500 was reputedly banned in Britain over a decade ago due to its highly toxic affects on both the environment and people; in this case we have Corexit 9500 being used over a large volume of water.
The use of this chemical in such quantities and at such oceanic depths is unknown in human history, and the exact contents of the mixture are a trade secret. Expected health effects are respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders, again grossly affecting children due to their smaller size. At this time over 600,000 gallons of Corexit 9500 have been utilised in an attempt to clean up the oil spill. To make things even worse, the toxicity of Corexit 9500 in a solution of water increases with water temperature, and oil in the water is resulting in higher water temperatures.
Clearly the sea-creatures living in and around the Gulf of Mexico are going to be off the menu for some time. The government won’t willingly allow people to eat contaminated seafood right?
Unfortunately however, the Gulf Coast is responsible for about 50% of the total US harvest in its peak season. Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico is estimated to be worth $2.4 billion per year. Not only is fishing an essential part of USA’s GDP, but people are still eating fish and so the demand causes pressure on other fishing localities to increase the supply.
Do not also forget that some fish are highly migratory, particularly deep ocean fish, sometimes travelling up to 200 miles for feeding and reproduction. It is not possible to identify whether any individual fish has ever come into contact with the oil or the disbursant that is choking the Gulf of Mexico area.
Health issues aside, there is a secondary issue which will begin to affect other fishing areas. That is overfishing. Overfishing is when commercial fishing operations catch so many fish that the remaining population of fish are not able to increase their numbers enough to replace the number that have been caught. As it is, overfishing has already been a global issue for some time and according to overfishing.org, almost 80% of the world’s fisheries are fully to over-exploited, depleted or in a state of collapse, and over 90% of the stocks of large predatory fish stocks are already gone. If we do not do something about it, we are approaching a situation where some fish may become endangered species. By increasing demand for fish from areas that normally have fewer fish numbers, we are simultaneously speeding up the rate at which the population of fish from that area declines.
Overfishing has a large effect on the ocean ecology as a whole. As fewer fish are caught in commercial fishing nets, ocean mammals and birds (such as dolphins, whales and pelicans) either have a hard time finding food, or are caught in nets themselves. Once caught in fishing nets, these animals and birds are usually killed and discarded.
So while those of us who are not yet affected by the disaster in the USA can sit back and watch everything unfold, it will be our fish stock that will be increasingly removed from the oceans to make up for the shortfall in US fishing.
In my opinion, the only healthy and ethical thing to do about the seafood issue is to completely stop eating fish and their byproducts. We need to look into getting our EFAs from other sources such as flaxseeds, spirulina, chlorella and phytoplankton. Fortunately fish do not create their own EFAs, but instead break down the EFAs in the microalgae food that they consume. Humans are able to do the same, and so we can replace fish in the diet with supplemental sources of EFA. I have previously used fish oil for DHA supplementation, but I am going to try out some vegan alternatives.
Learn more about your health. Stop by Petra Smirnoff’s site where you can find out all about the healthiest diets so that you can lose weight and feel great.
Related posts:
- Scuba Diving Reefs In Mexico
- Where To Fish
- From Catching And Feeding, To Catch And Releasing, Fish Games Can Be Fun For Everyone
- Coarse Fishing Tackle – Tips To Getting Tackle For Any Kind Of Fish
- Knowing The Fly Fishing Basics
