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Earth United States Science

Eating One US Fish Is Equivalent To Drinking a Month's Worth of Contaminated Water, Study Finds 117

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Eating one freshwater fish caught in a river or lake in the United States is the equivalent of drinking a month's worth of water contaminated with toxic "forever chemicals," new research said on Tuesday. The invisible chemicals, called PFAS, were first developed in the 1940s to resist water and heat and are now used in items such as non-stick pans, textiles, fire suppression foams and food packaging. But the indestructibility of PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, means the pollutants have built up over time in the air, soil, lakes, rivers, food, drinking water and even our bodies. There have been growing calls for stricter regulation for PFAS, which have been linked to a range of serious health issues including liver damage, high cholesterol, reduced immune responses and several kinds of cancer.

To find out PFAS contamination in locally caught fish, a team of researchers analyzed more than 500 samples from rivers and lakes across the United States between 2013 and 2015. The median level of PFAS in the fish was 9,500 nanograms per kilogram, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Research. Nearly three quarters of the detected "forever chemicals" were PFOS, one of the most common and hazardous of the thousands of forms of PFAS. Eating just one freshwater fish equalled drinking water with PFOS at 48 parts per trillion for a month, the researchers calculated. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency lowered the level of PFOS in drinking water it considers safe to 0.02 parts per trillion. The total PFAS level in the freshwater fish was 278 times higher than what has been found in commercially sold fish, the study said.
"This study is important because it provides the first evidence for widespread transfer of PFAS directly from fish to humans," said David Andrews, a senior scientist at the non-profit Environmental Working Group, which led research. He's calling for much more stringent regulation to bring an end to all non-essential uses of PFAS.

The new findings appear in the journal Environmental Research.
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Eating One US Fish Is Equivalent To Drinking a Month's Worth of Contaminated Water, Study Finds

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  • by Bruce66423 ( 1678196 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:07PM (#63217848)

    Too much effort has been put into radioactive scares and genetically modified 'frankenfood' paranoia when the scary issue appears to be chemical pollution. Not going to be easy to address however!

    • by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:09PM (#63217860)
      The solutions is the same as the lead problem last century. We reduce the amount of the pollutant we’re dumping into the environment and wait for the levels to go down naturally. In the case of PFAS, it could take a looonnggggg time.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 )
        Hmm...I dunno, in the news lately,,

        Beef..."bad"...produces methane and has hormones.

        Fish ..."Bad"...equivalent to drinking a month's worth of polluted water (freshwater).

        And it seems pork and poultry have been labeled with bad things.

        Lemme take a wild shot here...

        Bugs/Insects..."GOOD"....right?

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Eating....bad.

          Existing...bad.

        • by Shane A Leslie ( 923938 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:36PM (#63217974) Homepage Journal

          Probably even more in wild bugs.
          Farmed bugs fed on plants grown hydroponically in rainwater only?

          • Rainwater is dirty by definition, since each rain drop forms around a nucleating particle — which is usually either pollen or soot, but it includes pretty much every particulate in the atmosphere. The only particularly desirable character of rainwater is neutral Ph. Almost no matter what, you need to filter your water. Some springs are still pretty clean, they travel through enough permeable rock to be well-filtered... for now.

            • Good point.

            • The pH of rainwater is not neutral. It's usually between 5 and 5.5, but can be much lower.
              • Rainwater with pH 5 is considered acid rain. Rainwater is not supposed to be this low pH. We did that

                • Some of it, sure. It used to be WAY worse, at least in North America, before the demise of heavy industry here. Here in the Cleveland area, in the 70s, it would literally sting to get rainwater in your eyes. Pittsburgh and Detroit were said to be even worse. I'd like to say that deindustrialization solved that problem, but it really didn't; it just moved it to the Far East along with most of the heavy industry and quite a few jobs.

                  One of our local bridges [external-preview.redd.it] literally corroded to death from fumes from th

        • by ThurstonMoore ( 605470 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:58PM (#63218016)

          This is not a new problem, the fishing regulation guide in my state has warned about consuming caught fish for as long as I can remember. I'm 49 and live in a blaze red state.

          • by Bill, Shooter of Bul ( 629286 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @07:23PM (#63218082) Journal
            yeah, but that was likely due to mercury. And advisories were typically " Don't eat more than one a week" this is going a bit farther.
          • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            This is global and due to mercury poisoning and bioaccumulation. Primarily caused by burning coal, which releases small amounts of mercury into the atmopshere which then accumulates water basins. And then as a bioaccumulating neurotoxin it concentrates in living beings on top of food chain, which is typically the kind of fish that humans consume.

        • by ToasterMonkey ( 467067 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @01:36AM (#63218782) Homepage

          This isn't a new thing. Maine, of all places, has had recommended limits for freshwater fish for a very long time. In internet years, a lifetime. Down to the type of fish and what part of which river you catch it in.

          https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/mec... [maine.gov]

          I'm guessing the east coast has this problem particularly bad due to having the earliest manufacturing industries in the country, but I doubt it's limited to there.

        • Bugs/Insects..."GOOD"....right?

          Nope. Those are also bad. Wild ones carry parasites and commercial production remains an unsolved problem. With the exception of silk worms (yes, people eat them) more as a byproduct of the silk industry. They are high in cholesterol so some people stopped eating them for that concern. Probably not a big deal except for people with specific metabolic issues around cholesterol.

          But even veggies are under attack. Almonds? uses too much water. Palm Oil? they are burning rainforests to grow more of it.

          In the end

          • Please do not lump almonds and palm oil in with common "veggies" as those are 2 fine examples of some destructive/wasteful crops that desperately need reengineering.
            • Asparagus is terrible for the environment if you buy it form the store. Transportation and food waste is astronomical. I recommend growing it at home if you have the climate for it, once its established it requires little care.

              Avocados and Bananas are also bad relative to other fruits and vegetables. So much food waste from these. Which is a pity because I like these. But they're not really the best choice for consumers that care about the environment.

        • Bugs/Insects..."GOOD"....right?

          And pods. Pods are great. You should live in a pod.

      • This PFAS thing sounds wussy level. If it's super dangerous they'd already have actual proof, instead of some correlation BS, and declare it a carcinogen. I'm not saying it doesn't have carcinogenic properties but it probably won't carcinogenasize most people unless they got massive IV-level doses of it.

      • by Cyberax ( 705495 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:38PM (#63217976)

        In the case of PFAS, it could take a looonnggggg time.

        PFAS have a half-life of at most 20 years in soil and 3 years in water. So we'll likely see huge improvements within a decade.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Posting anonymously to avoid undoing a prior moderation.

          You: PFAS have a half-life of at most 20 years in soil and 3 years in water. I assume that the human body is mostly water, the half life in water applies?

          TFS: the indestructibility of PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, means the pollutants have built up over time in the air, soil, lakes, rivers, food, drinking water and even our bodies. If they have a half life measured in a few years, they're not "indestructable". I suppose they actually mean

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          It's also worth remembering that we don't have causal links between these things and cancer. "Linked to" is journo clickbait language for "causal studies not done or failed to produce a link, but there's some correlation".

          This is why you won't find them on the commonly used proven carcinogen lists. And it doesn't take much to end on one of those. Just look at the hilarious California warnings for things that can end on those lists.

          • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @08:51AM (#63219306)

            It's also worth remembering that we don't have causal links between these things and cancer.

            Luckyo lifting a line directly from the cigarette manufacturer's playbook, knowing fully well proving a definitive causal link for something environmental in this way is incredibly difficult.

            The great thing about PFAS is there's no control group. None. Zero. Zip. Manufacturers were asked to voluntarily investigate the health impact and they couldn't identify a control group thanks to PFAS being found in 100% of the subject's blood samples. Correlated links are all we will ever achieve for PFAS even if they do very much cause cancer (or some other health effect)

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              It's interesting to me to observe people like this, who are vocally pro-science and anti-emotion when it supports their causes. And vocally anti-science and pro-emotion when it doesn't.

              Like here, when science does not support the claim, so the argument goes "but this entity used science in the past to mask their evil deeds, therefore your argument is morally evil". It's a hell of a condemnation of a scientific process. But the same individual is more than happy to cite science in his next argument, when app

              • Like here, when science does not support the claim

                When something isn't 100% proven causally that doesn't mean that something is "not science". Scientifically we already have a strong correlated link between PFAS and liver cancer. Proving it causally is not possible for reasons I stated. That is still science.

                Seriously man, back to basics with you. Kids get taught what is and isn't science in grade 8.

                • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                  First of all, science proves nothing at 100% rate. Scientific process cannot do that by design. The entire point of science is to establish "best currently possible proof of a hypothesis being as close to correct as possible". By definition, this precludes science ever being 100% correct. There is always room for being more correct.

                  And scientifically, we do not have "strong correlated link between x and y that establishes hypothesis as correct" because "strong correlated link" is not a form of scientific pr

        • by Anonymous Coward

          In the case of PFAS, it could take a looonnggggg time.

          PFAS have a half-life of at most 20 years in soil and 3 years in water. So we'll likely see huge improvements within a decade.

          Got a citation to go with your claim?

          Because...

          The persistence of a chemical is described by its half-life – the time it takes for the concentration of a chemical in a medium (water, soil, human body) under certain conditions to have decreased by 50%. This is not an easily quantifiable parameter and the half-life of all the 4,730+ PFAS is not known. However, for some PFAS polymers, half-lives of over 1,000 years in soil have been estimated8,9 whilst half-life greater than 40 years in water have been

      • The solutions is the same as the lead problem last century. We reduce the amount of the pollutant we’re dumping into the environment and wait for the levels to go down naturally. In the case of PFAS, it could take a looonnggggg time.

        Greed doesn't have that long.

        Neither does a planet infected with almost 8 billion greedy little parasites.

    • by denzacar ( 181829 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @07:15PM (#63218070) Journal

      9,500 nanograms per kilogram is literally 9.5 parts in 1000000000.
      Maximum Contaminant Level of URANIUM that is allowed in drinking water is 30 parts in 1000000000.

      You can literally gobble up more than 3 times as much URANIUM and be fine - as you probably do already. [epa.gov]

      • 9,500 nanograms per kilogram is literally 9.5 parts in 1000000000.
        Maximum Contaminant Level of URANIUM that is allowed in drinking water is 30 parts in 1000000000.
        You can literally gobble up more than 3 times as much URANIUM and be fine - as you probably do already.

        That also says you can eat 15 times more uranium than mercury, how does writing URANIUM in caps make mercury or PFAS safer? Because URANIUM?

        • Caps don't make it safer. The DOSE does.

          Or do you think that mercury is magically poisonous? Are you one of those people who got autistic due to mercury in vaccines?

      • So Uranium Don't Hurt!

        Q.E.D.

    • Chemicals are NOT a problem and you are an anti-progress Luddite who want to live in the stone age!

      Oh, did I type chemicals? I meant to say GMO. No modern corporation will be irresponsible in their application of science or cover up problems or completely skip doing reasonable checks.

    • Your enthusiasm reminds me of those who were against cigarettes about thirty years before the cigarette companies were forced to admit their product was harmful.

      Boy sure is a good thing they got all that "attention" to prevent tobacco from maintaining it's status as one of America's largest killers.../s

  • by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:10PM (#63217864)
    Give a man a fish and he will be fed for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will have a shorter lifetime with which to care?

    Puts a new twist on so long, and thanks for all the fish.
    • by Vulch ( 221502 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:21PM (#63217906)

      Teach a man to fish and his wife will blame you because he's never around to do all the chores she's got lined up for him and he's spent the housekeeping money on a new rod again.

    • Unlikely, eating a pure fatty fish diet would be healthier than vegan, vegetarian or overcooked red meat diet.

      The question is what happens to the chemicals we eat, how much of it is retained and are those levels dangerous. Most of those things (eg Teflon) are used specifically because they are non-reactive in a wide range of situations.

      Most of the cancer research etc is basically dosing genetically modified rodents with unnaturally high levels and then interpolating the mice that weigh 10g into a 200kg huma

    • and he will spend tens of thousands of dollars on boat & trailer and fishing gear to catch 10 or 20 dollars worth of fish
  • ...then by all accounts I should be dead.

  • Don't worry, it's perfectly safe to eat the food fertilized with the excrement of people who ear fish. Besides the PFAs and fun pharmaceuticals, those people also contribute to your daily allowance of microplastics. Bon appetit!

    Soylent Green, now with PFAs!

  • by xevioso ( 598654 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:19PM (#63217898)

    Since I live on the coast, I pretty much only buy saltwater fish here. Maybe the toxicity in those is high too, but we won't know until studies are done. The mackerel on my fancy sushi is probably fine.

    Note that the article talks about the "median" amount of toxicity... it may very well be the case that states that have higher amounts of regulation, like California, have safer fish, whereas states that don't give a shit or have Republican governors opposed to regulation have higher amounts of pollution in their rivers, and thus higher amounts of toxicity in their fish.

    • Next time you gut a mackerel & you find a kernel of sweetcorn in it, ask yourself how it got there.
    • by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @07:19PM (#63218078)

      it may very well be the case that states that have higher amounts of regulation, like California, have safer fish, whereas states that don't give a shit or have Republican governors opposed to regulation have higher amounts of pollution in their rivers, and thus higher amounts of toxicity in their fish.

      You may not have noticed that virtually everything in California causes cancer and have labels to prove it.

      • 1,000 chemicals are on that list. I guess the qualifier "virtually" allows you to follow up with whatever bullshit you feel like.
        • 1,000 chemicals are on that list. I guess the qualifier "virtually" allows you to follow up with whatever bullshit you feel like.

          1000 widely used chemicals that are common in many consumer goods. Putting labels on things that are objectively unconnected to the actual risk just desensitizes people. The prevailing advice on Prop 65 labels is to ignore them.

          “As long as you’re not eating that dvd reader you’re probably fine.”;

          https://www.consumerreports.or... [consumerreports.org]

          "The Prop 65 label is like a noisy alarm that rings equally loudly about smaller amounts of low-risk substances and huge amounts of potentially har

          • When choosing products, the one that says in CA it may cause cancer.... tells me to choose the other product.

            • Those labels are useful. The ones on businesses that say something in this building may cause cancer are worthless, you could put them on every building on the planet.

  • by dmay34 ( 6770232 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:23PM (#63217912)

    Eating one freshwater fish caught in a river or lake in the United States is the equivalent of drinking a month's worth of water contaminated with toxic "forever chemicals" is a sentence that doesn't make sense. We don't calculated dosage in "months of chemicals".

    The writer could have said something like:
    "Eating 2-3 lbs of US freshwater salmon is the equivalent of drinking 4 gallons of contaminated water from the same stream".

    Or something like that.

    • by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:34PM (#63217964)
      Yeah, but how much is that in standard NFL fields?
      • by dmay34 ( 6770232 )

        I'm not sure what NFL means in this context but, yeah, none of that is standardized. Ponds, lakes, rivers and streams are not all contaminated with PFAS chemicals at the same concentrations, and neither are the fish.

        But none of that matters anyway because the whole sentence is incomprehensible.

    • Eating one freshwater fish caught in a river or lake in the United States is the equivalent of drinking a month's worth of water contaminated with toxic "forever chemicals" is a sentence that doesn't make sense. We don't calculated dosage in "months of chemicals".

      It's called clickba, wait are you new here? Like Earth I mean? You must me. Tell us where you came from and what the hell you did with your waste.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      The whole story is meaningless. But it will alarm a lot of people who don't understand it. Given the entire lack of information and the scary generalisations used, that group of people who don't understand the actual nature of the threat would contain the set of everybody exposed to the toxic article.

    • A lot of times these chemicals get stuck in your body. That's why there's no safe amount of lead exposure. I would imagine it's the same in the case of these chemicals. Your body holds on to them whether you like it or not.
      • So what? It holds onto a lot of things.

        • by cstacy ( 534252 )

          A lot of times these chemicals get stuck in your body. That's why there's no safe amount of lead exposure. I would imagine it's the same in the case of these chemicals. Your body holds on to them whether you like it or not.

          So what? It holds onto a lot of things.

          Not if you drink enough contaminated water, it doesn't!

          (Really just a few drops on your hands before mealtime will solve that constipation...)

    • by ediron2 ( 246908 )

      Hmm... Admittedly, journos aren't scientists, and generally say unscientific convoluted phrases trying to 'popularize'. Still:
      The study likely gives the specs of what it considers 'eating a US freshwater fish', and the dose of PFAS one would get.
      We know (even if via another source) the contamination of us drinking water, and OP listed the EPA standards.
      We know (somewhere else likely) 'how much water we consume per month'.
      So, there's the amount of PFAS from a fish vs/ the amount from drinking water in a mo

    • by nagora ( 177841 )

      Eating one freshwater fish caught in a river or lake in the United States is the equivalent of drinking a month's worth of water contaminated with toxic "forever chemicals" is a sentence that doesn't make sense. We don't calculated dosage in "months of chemicals".

      The writer could have said something like:
      "Eating 2-3 lbs of US freshwater salmon is the equivalent of drinking 4 gallons of contaminated water from the same stream".

      Or something like that.

      We do however know how much water people normally need to drink in a month. So I don't see the problem.

  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:28PM (#63217932)

    Eating one freshwater fish caught in a river or lake in the United States is the equivalent of drinking a month's worth of water contaminated with toxic "forever chemicals," ... called PFAS, ... are now used in items such as non-stick pans, ...

    New and Improved Fish Sticks: Fish Non-Sticks

    • I like the full circle logic. We no longer need non-stick pans since we made everything we might ever put in the pan non-stick.

  • I'm sure the Free Market is going to solve this. Many things have failed in the past because it wasn't given enough of a chance. (/s)

  • New traditional post!
  • My state (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ThurstonMoore ( 605470 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @06:52PM (#63218008)

    I just checked the fishing regulations in my state and they devote 3 pages to consumption advisories. The only fish that are safe to eat an unlimited amount of are trout and that is because they are stocked in the rivers and don't live there long enough to accumulate a lot of chemicals. The other fish are limited to one to two meals a month depending on species, with some areas not safe to eat any fish.

  • So when I catch a fish and then THROW IT IN THE GARBAGE I'm actually cleaning the environment? I can get behind this.

  • by xfade551 ( 2627499 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @08:10PM (#63218204)

    So, there were 501 samples taken over two studies that this study cites; one is a national sampling, the other is near shore Great Lakes only. This averages out to slightly more than one fish per congressional district. It lists a breakdown by species (sort of), but it only accounts for 289 samples of the total. It's unclear why they left some species off the list, given they list one species with just one sample, and another with just three.

    From the study, here are the samples by species, that they chose to list:
    Coho (Pacific silver) salmon: 3
    Chinook (Pacific king) salmon: 6
    Yellow Perch: 24
    Walleye: 31
    Smallmouth bass: 77
    Largemouth bass: 37
    White catfish: 1
    Flathead catfish: 9
    Blue catfish: 12
    Channel catfish: 86

  • Come on, everyone knows shrimp are very picked about the water they live in
  • Is this one of the 50% of all studies that is going to be debunked? I find the conclusion absurd. I catch a trout in a remote high elevation stream and eating it is worse that drinking a bucket of bad water? I don't think so.

    BTW, there are plenty of places in the US where there are streams and rivers that you shouldn't eat the fish from, but that doesn't mean a remote high altitude stream catch in Montana, Utah, or even California is going to make you sick.

  • Eat more chicken, turkey or seafood, they said.

    Yeah, no matter what I follow, someone comes along and says it's all wrong.

  • by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @09:06PM (#63218344)

    Wow, one polluted fish equal to a month's worth of water? What an easy way to get in your recommended 8 glasses of water per day!

  • by Volda ( 1113105 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @09:31PM (#63218386)
    I know something needs to be done to keep our rivers and lakes clean. We need to stop using crap that is toxic to, well, everything. I have a interest in this as I find fishing relaxing, enjoyable and tasty. I've been fishing as far back as I can remember and still go on week + long trips to enjoy everything about it.

    I did look at their pdf and the testing locations because I was curious about where my family and I fish. The testing sites seem to be tilted toward places near large cities and eastern US. St. Louis is their main testing area in Missouri, yet only one spot in Kansas City. Those are probably the two dirtiest areas in Missouri. Though I do see that the great lakes are a problem almost everywhere on this side of the border. I wouldn't eat anything going down the Mississippi. They don't call it the muddy Mississippi for nothing...

    Ive been to most of the best trout fishing areas in Missouri and they didn't test the two biggest springs or several of the lakes that I have been to for carp and bass. Here is a short list:

    Table rock (branson)
    Mark Twain (Hannibal)
    Harry S Truman (Warsaw)
    Bennet springs (Lebanon)
    Montauk springs(Salem)

    None of those lakes/springs/rivers were tested. It looks like they got a small part of the Meramec and Missouri rivers near St Louis but nothing else. So maybe they need to expand their testing. There are hundreds more stream and probably thousands more lakes, albeit small, they should be testing. That's just Missouri. There are large areas of the western US that look to be untested. So I would like more information.

    I wouldn't be surprised if there were higher levels but I don't have the data to say good or bad.

    Anyway, we always should try to keep things clean. We have done enough and its time to clean up for ourselves.
    • by jbengt ( 874751 )
      Check your state's fishing regulations. They are the ones that should be testing and advising for your state. The non-profit Environmental Working Group doing the study written about in TFA are not going to test every river and lake in the US.
  • I do wonder though if the chemicals in the U.S. fish outweigh the amount of beer it takes to catch it. If it was a European fish, maybe the number of cigarettes would be the concern.

  • by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @11:32PM (#63218586)

    Especially after what came out about the recent story/study about the dangers of gas stoves. It was staged by a CCP-tied company [freebeacon.com] whose business model is to convert homes from gas the electric.

    • Jeesus Christ. Did you read that link before you posted? Literal fake news.

      Amongst all the other bullshit and scaremongering is the smoking gun. They say the gas-stoves-contribute-to-poor-quality-report is 9 paragraphs long. It's not. It's 34 PAGES

      Check it out yourself [cuserstipr...llutionpdf]

      And none of this is new, or even slightly controversial information. Burning methane indoors reduces air quality. Duh. It is only news to some because up until recently, this was lost in the background of shitty air quality from everything els

  • where all food is paste, because that's the only thing left to eat that won't kill you. man made paste.

  • When something big happens, and I mean anything. We literally have a hundred thousand different 0.00001% chance things that could happen which would severely disrupt all of our supply chains. Between a major earthquake, giant solar flare, world war, meteor strike, etc etc. Eventually, just like the recent 1.x Billion dollar lottery winners, one of those chances is going to get "lucky". When the supply chain to these 5+ million person cities is cut off, where will they go for food? Everywhere in the l

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