SAN FRANCISCO, March 11 (Xinhua) -- A new study shows detailed consumption advisories have a role in recent years when fish consumption has increased while blood mercury concentrations have decreased among women of childbearing age in the United States.
The research, published in the journal Environmental Health by researchers with Oregon State University (OSU), looked at fish consumption patterns with regard to blood mercury levels in U.S. women of childbearing age from 1999 to 2010 using data from the ongoing U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Food from the ocean has a unique nutritional profile. Among seafood's many benefits are the omega-3 fatty acids that promote neurodevelopment, therefore are especially important for pregnant women to pass on to developing fetuses. But the main way people are exposed to toxic methylmercury, a mercury atom with a methyl group, CH3, attached to it, is through eating seafood.
Comparatively less-toxic elemental mercury enters the ocean from natural sources such as volcanic eruptions and also from human activities like the burning of fossil fuels, which accounts for about two-thirds of the mercury that goes into the water.
Once in the ocean, the mercury is methylated, diffuses into phytoplankton and passes up the food chain, accumulating along the way. A scallop or a shrimp, for example, can have a mercury concentration of less than 0.003 parts per million. A large predator like a tuna, on the other hand, can contain roughly 10 million times as much methylmercury as the water that surrounds it and have a concentration of many parts per million.
【国际英语资讯:Detailed advisories help bring down blood mercury concentrations among women】相关文章:
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