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Hey, It's 'Gulf Coast Seafood Night!' ... But Is Gulf Seafood Safe?

Jon Bowermaster | 2 days ago | Comments (1) | Flag this


Nearly 300 restaurants nationwide have joined in promoting Wednesday, December 1, as “Dine Out America: America’s Night Out for Gulf Seafood.”

The mission: Get folks around the country back to eating fish, oysters, shrimp and crabs taken from the Gulf of Mexico.

The “special night out,” according to the New Orleans group organizing the effort, is meant to “honor the thousands of Americans and their families in the Gulf seafood industry who are now back at work fishing the Gulf waters for their catches.”


The shrimp look good; they might even smell good, but are they good for you? (Photo: Sean Gardner/Reuters)
Which sounds fine and good, in a patriotic, support-our-neighbors kind of way, but one big question remains: Are we sure seafood from the Gulf is ready for prime time?

While most of the Gulf’s fishing grounds have been reopened since the BP oil spill, and the government vouches for Gulf seafood safety, the market remains depressed.

I called my friend Marylee Orr who, for more than 23 years, has run the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) in Baton Rouge. The group’s expertise is studying the impact of environmental pollution on both the natural world and human health.

Though she has many fishermen friends and understands their plight, based on just-completed blood sampling done by Louisiana chemists, Orr’s not 100 percent convinced the nation should be pitched Gulf seafood.

Her concerns are straightforward:

* In the midst of the BP gusher, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with input and concurrence from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), raised the allowable levels of PAH (polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons) in Gulf seafood. The chemicals are an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-classified carcinogen, particularly harmful to pregnant women and infants. The BP crude was full of PAHs. “The FDA based their decisions on a 175-pound person eating four shrimp a week, which is a joke on the Gulf,” says Orr. In the Gulf, four shrimp don’t even qualify as an appetizer. “And what about all the children and our Vietnamese fishermen [who are smaller]?”

* Much of the government’s evidence continues to be based on “sensory testing”—essentially giving seafood a sniff test. Shrimp or fish only go on to further government testing if they smell bad. “We’ve given the seafood we’ve tested the smell test, and there was no odor,” says Orr. “However, when we got the numbers back after testing it, they were alarmingly high for both petroleum hydrocarbons and PAHs.”

Orr and LEAN are not alone in their concerns. Ed Cake, an environmental consultant from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, recently told the International Conference on Shellfish Restoration: “They’re doing the sniff and taste test. We as human beings no longer have the nose of bloodhounds. I will not eat any seafood coming from the Central Gulf at this point.”

Chuck Hopkins, director of the Georgia Sea Grant Program at the University of Georgia, told the same conference that he’d just been to New Orleans and had eaten shrimp and oysters six days in a row. But was it safe? Given the misleading information doled out by the government during the spill, Hopkins admitted he didn’t have full faith in its current testing. “Why should I believe their claim that the seafood is safe?”

Perhaps the toughest and most consistent critic has been Dr. William Sawyer of the Sanibel, Florida-based Toxicology Consultants and Assessment Specialists. Since the spill, Sawyer says, he has found petroleum in 100 percent of the shrimp, oysters and fish he’s tested that were already on their way to the marketplace.

The government contends that those toxins are far below dangerous levels.

Sawyer is adamant. “I don’t recommend eating Gulf seafood, not with the risk of liver and kidney damage."

He has called the FDA’s safety threshold “borderline absurd. ... It’s geared so that shrimpers can go back to work and that’s great … But if we’re talking about human health and the environment, you need to proceed slowly.”

Evidence of contamination from dispersants used during the BP spill is mounting too. Since the BP well was capped, Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection has found the widely-used dispersant Corexit in two out of four tests; prior to the spill, they found no Corexit in 20 samples.

Full Coverage: Gulf Coast Oil Spill

Quick Study: Ocean Pollution

Related Stories: A Fisherman's Heartbreak: Louisiana's Coming "Summer of Tears" | Toxic Shock: Gulf Seafood Testing to Altered Standards | Gulf Coast Shrimpers Face Uncertain, Shrinking Future | Human Sniffers Using Their Noses to Whiff Out Oil-Tainted Gulf Coast Seafood