Update:

  

What's the deal with Mercury?

 

Our resolution:  We're buying a different kind of tuna.  The larger the predator, the more accumulated mercury it consumes and retains.  We've been eating albacore tuna.  That's the biggest one.  We've switched to "Chunk Light Tuna".  Skipjack tuna.  It's a smaller fish and only has about a third the mercury of albacore.

 

Now that we're "tuna conscious", sometimes we eat tuna salad, sometimes we eat chicken salad prepared just the same but with different meat.  (The chicken salad isn't quite as satisfying, but it's a reasonable substitute.  And since chickens aren't apex predators, I don't think we have to worry about any mercury accumulation in them.)  So that's our solution.  Chicken salad, tuna salad with skipjack tuna, we don't eat it every day, and we don't worry about it when we do.

 

 

From: Steve Taylor
Sent: Thursday, April 1, 2021 9:49 PM
Subject: What's the deal with Mercury

 

 

 

 

It's a toxic heavy metal.  A neurotoxin.  It gets in the ocean and attaches to dissolved organic matter like decomposing plants and animals.  Microorganisms and minnows ingest the decomposing plants and animals and accumulate mercury.  Bigger critters eat the smaller critters.  Mercury is cumulative.  The top predator fish have in their systems all the mercury from all the smaller critters they've eaten; a dramatically larger amount of mercury than what's naturally in the surrounding environment.

 

Too much mercury is bad for us so we should limit our mercury consumption.  Our primary mercury source is seafood.  The worst fish we can eat is a large predator fish like tuna.  I love tuna.  Freshly grilled tuna.  Baked tuna.  Tuna right out of the can.  Tuna salad.  Tuna salad sandwich on buttered toast.  A scoop of tuna salad in a sliced avocado.  Grilled tuna salad sandwich with cheese.  Tuna casserole.  I love tuna!  Grew up on it.

 

I googled how often we should eat the kind of tuna Judy and I eat, to minimize our risk of overexposure to mercury.  Google said one serving every nine days.  What?  I'd rather eat it every day.  Is tuna primarily a danger to the development of young minds and bodies?  For me, that ship has already sailed.  Sitting in class, not paying attention to the instructor, but playing with the mercury drops one of the kids got by breaking a thermometer; liquid beads of room-temperature molten metal rolling about on a piece of paper, fascinating.  Not only that, but if you get it on your fingers and massage it onto the surface of a dime, that dime will shine brighter than it ever did when it was new!  Do you suppose I've absorbed at least my fair share of mercury?  Yeah.  That ship has already sailed.  Without a lifeboat.  Whatever damage could be done to my development has already been well done.

 

Is there a danger of excess mercury consumption for a senior citizen?  If I eat too much tuna now, will I suddenly go senile (quicker), or suffer some other life altering malady?  I don't know.  If there is no immediate danger, beyond whatever damage is already done, I sure would love to have at least one serving of tuna salad waiting for me in the fridge every day for the rest of my life.  What is one to do?