[/caption]GHN News —Scientists tell us that the worst contamination of San Francisco Bay is mercury in the fish. This is, they say a major environmental disaster, and refer to it as a serious enemy to the waters of the area.
Mining in the area during the 19th and 20th centuries combined with pollution of oil refineries along with chemical and waste water treatment plants are said to be responsible for the mercury that threaten wildlife and fish consumption.
Indeed mercury is going into the food web, according to scientists.
" Joel Blum, who is the John
D. MacArthur Professor of Geological Sciences and a professor of ecology
at U-M, said "This is the first study to track mercury directly from source
to sediment to food web."
The same way the problems have been studied for San Francisco Bay can be utilized for studies elsewhere, scientists believe. Gretchen Gehrke, the paper's lead author, maintains
"Mercury contamination is a problem in areas all over the world, and
most of those places have multiple possible mercury sources. There's a
lot of interest in figuring out which sources are contributing the
mercury that most readily gets into the food web and creates
environmental and health risks."
The findings appear in two companion papers, one in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal Geochemica et Cosmochimica Acta and the other published online Jan. 21 in Environmental Science & Technology.
Health problems from too much mercury in the food supply include damage to the central nervous system, heart and
immune system, as well as infant developing brains.. The developing brains of young and unborn children are
especially vulnerable.
It is the hope of the researchers in this study that their results will help agencies determine how to protect wildlife from mercury exposure and from it therefore entering the food supply.
