Alaska Public Health Laboratory Puts Salmon Back on the Menu

Alaska residents eat hundreds of pounds of fish—mostly salmon—every year. In fact, many Alaskans rely on locally caught fish as their primary source of protein and have no readily available alternative.

Hence, Alaskan public health officials took note when the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued national advisories in 2001 and 2004, recommending that women of childbearing age restrict their fish consumption to avoid excess exposure to methylmercury, the primary form of mercury absorbed by humans from fish. Officials recognized that fish is a nutritious food, also important to the spiritual, cultural and economic health of many Alaskan communities. Would warning people away from fish actually harm their health?

Alaska public health laboratory scientists and epidemiologists knew they had the ability to measure actual human exposure to mercury among Alaskan women of childbearing age who eat Alaskan salmon. If local, wild-caught fish posed a risk to state residents, they wanted to be certain.

In July 2002, public health laboratory scientists and state epidemiologists began an ongoing program using new biomonitoring technology to measure mercury levels in hair samples voluntarily provided by pregnant women at the invitation of their health care providers. They also performed targeted testing of women of childbearing age—pregnant or not—in areas of the state where residents consume especially large quantities of fish and/or marine mammals. Through December 2004, scientists analyzed hair samples from 178 pregnant women and 71 women of childbearing age residing in 40 Alaska communities. All the tested women had hair mercury levels well below the World Health Organization’s “no observed effect level” of 14 parts per million (ppm).

Based on these findings, the Alaska Division of Public Health was able to confidently recommend unrestricted consumption of fish caught in Alaskan waters.