A new study about mercury in the Pacific Ocean is completely irrelevant to consumers who eat tuna and other marine fish, the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) said today. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists, whose work was published today in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, tested only ocean water, not fish. Despite the lack of any new data on mercury levels in actual seafood, a USGS press release claimed that “increased mercury emissions from human sources… contaminate tuna and other seafood.”

In a recently concluded legal case which struck down a demand for warning labels on tuna cans, two different California courts found that virtually all the mercury traces in tuna and other ocean fish are “naturally occurring.”

And today’s USGS study can’t dispute the December 2003 findings of Francois Morel, the noted Princeton University geochemist. Morel’s research found that mercury levels in Pacific Ocean tuna did not increase at all during a 27-year period, despite a significant increase in human-generated atmospheric mercury. Continue Reading →