By Junior Levi Kassinove

Hey, you. Yeah, you! Put that tuna sandwich down, or tuna sushi, or…whatever you’re eating that includes fish and listen up. There’s an astounding amount of mercury in your seafood. The amount of mercury in bluefin tuna, the fish commonly used in tuna sushi, is around 1 part per million (mercuryfactsandfish.org). To give you an idea of how high that concentration is, the FDA recommends that adults do not eat more than 6-8 ounces of albacore per week. A can of tuna typically holds 3-5 ounces. Albacore, which already contains a relatively high amount of mercury, has 1⁄3 of the mercury concentration of bluefin tuna (edf.org). So, you essentially cannot eat more than ⅓ of a can of bluefin tuna per week. Maybe that isn’t that difficult for you. Maybe you don’t like fish. But, if you often indulge in tuna, you’re probably getting more and more frightened with every line you read. And, I don’t have good news for you. 

Effects of Mercury Poisoning

Let’s say you’re reading this article after you’ve had a nice dinner at a sushi restaurant. You’re not adventurous, so you stayed away from the monkfish liver, the live jumbo shrimp, and the squid balls. You played it safe and went to town on the tuna nigiri. Well, here are the effects of the neurotoxin you just ingested, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. 

-Numb or “pins and needles” sensations

-Cognitive impairment 

-Impairment of speech

-Loss of peripheral vision

-Loss of muscle coordination

-Seizures (my.clevelandclinic.org) 

-Multiple organ failure (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) 

-Death

How did tuna become infested with so much mercury in the first place? Why is your tuna nigiri laced with thermometer juice? The answer lies in the food chain. There is a low level of mercury present in our waters, so many microorganisms contain a small amount of it. The bluefin tuna, being a large fish, is far up on the food chain. A small fish eats tons of microorganisms, gaining their mercury. A larger fish eats many of those small fish, and the level of mercury grows exponentially as you go farther up the food chain. This is why sharks contain the highest concentration of mercury out of all seafood (sharkconservation.org.au). 

The Takeaway

The pescatarians are obviously trying to kill us all! Eat more steak. Eat more plants. But, as we say in Wagyuland, fish is best eaten in moderation.