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Avoiding Fish Harms Children
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A recent [2006] large scale, long term study has found that the children of women who ate little or no fish during their pregnancy were more likely to have low scores for verbal IQ at the age of 8, and as toddlers, had lower scores in development tests measuring fine motor, communication and social skills. There were additional problems in the way they related to other children at the age of 7. |
This fits well with the previous article about the breakthrough discovery that ADD, HAD in toddlers can be cured by providing a Omega-3 fatty acid supplement.
It further fits well with a 15 year-long study of mothers and children in the Seychelles Islands (see below) where people typically eat about 12 fish meals per week, including pregnant women, but no ill effects have been found in their children.
Although this shows that mercury in fish is not a bad a story as it is made out to be, there are other factors which may well put some people "over the top" for mercury poisoning. These are mercury amalgam fillings in one's teeth - a constant source of leaching methyl mercury; mercury air pollution from coal fired power plants, smelters and mercury manufacturing processes - also a constant source of methyl mercury in some areas; mercury in the soil, and water - from mercury in dumps; and mercy in some cosmetics (whitening agents).
For people who are heavily exposed to these constant sources of methyl mercury, eating fish frequently might well "put them over the top" into the region of mercury poisoning.
For the whole story on mercury see THE MERCURY STORY in these pages.
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Original Article:
Benefits of A Seafood Diet Outweigh the Risks
Restrictions on fish consumption during pregnancy could have damaging consequences for the child in the womb.
[News - Bristol University, 20 January 2006] Under current guidelines in the United States, pregnant women, or those likely to become pregnant are advised to limit overall consumption of seafood to 12 oz per week (340 g). The advice issued in 2004 by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration was designed to protect against traces of methyl mercury in fish.
But instead of protecting the unborn baby, women who follow the advice may be harming their children, according to new research based on thousands of British children who are part of the Children of the 90s project, based at the University of Bristol.
Scientists believe that mothers on a low fish diet have been unknowingly depriving their children of omega-3 fatty acids, a vital component in brain development. As a result the children scored lower in tests of IQ , fine motor skills and behaviour. The lead researcher Dr Joe Hibbeln from the US National Institutes of Health presented the results at the McCarrison Society conference in London on January 17. He said that in some respects the findings are “frightening”.
“We have found that when women comply with the advisory, the outcome is exactly the opposite to what was intended." Dr Joe Hibbeln and the Bristol scientists looked back at records of almost 9,000 pregnant women taking part in the Children of the 90s project who had recorded details of their seafood intake. They compared those families whose diet had complied with the guidelines, (less than 340 g per week) against those who ate plenty of fish.
Then they went through a series of psychological and developmental assessments on the children at six different stages of childhood. In 31 different tests, researchers noticed significant differences in test scores according to the amount of seafood the mothers had eaten. Even after adjusting for other factors – such as social class, or whether the mother breast fed - children whose mothers had no fish in their diet were more likely to have low scores for verbal IQ at the age of 8. As toddlers, they recorded lower scores in development tests measuring fine motor, communication and social skills. There were additional problems in the way they related to other children at the age of 7.
Dr Hibbeln said: “We have found that when women comply with the advisory, the outcome is exactly the opposite to what was intended. “When they did this risk assessment, they only looked at toxicity from methyl mercury derived from a particular population consuming pilot whale in their diet. They didn't look at fish as a whole, and they didn't calculate the risk of depriving women of the beneficial nutrients which are unique in fish.
“Unfortunately the internationally-recognised advisory appears to have the unintended consequence of causing harm in a specific domain where protection was intended.
“The findings of poor social development and poor motor control in children indicate that these children may be on a developmental trajectory towards lifelong disruptive and poorly-socialised behaviour as they grow up.”
[source: Bristol University, News, 20 January 2006 -
www.bris.ac.uk/news/2006/888.html
Original Article:
The Seychelles Study
Davidson, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester, said he thinks there is not enough evidence for Americans to be cutting fish entirely out of their diet based on mercury fears. "Our own feeling is that warning people not to eat fish has adverse effects of its own because fish is very nutritious," he said.
Davidson has been working on a study conducted by the University of Rochester Medical Center that suggests eating fish — and therefore consuming mercury - during childbearing years and pregnancy may not be problematic after all. In 1990, Davidson along with other researchers began studying children in the Seychelles, an archipelago nation off Africa's eastern coast, where women typically eat 12 meals of fish per week - even when they're pregnant.
"The hypothesis has always been that there are adverse effects from consuming fish during pregnancy," Davidson said.
The mothers - who predominantly eat karang or jack but also regularly consume tuna, red snapper, parrotfish, mackerel, kordonye and grouper - have mercury levels far higher than the average American. The Seychelles women in the study averaged six parts per million, while the average American has one part per million.
The researchers have measured the functioning of 700 children based on 64 different "endpoints," including cognitive abilities, perception, social skills and memory. The oldest children in the study are 15, as they were born when the study began. "Up to now, six times we've seen these kids, and we've been unable to confirm adverse effects," Davidson said.
The study recently received funding to visit the Seychelles and measure the children twice more.
[source: "How Safe Is a Seafood Diet?" - By LIZ BOROD WRIGHT - ABC News - Oct. 21, 2005]
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