More than 40% of our lakes are unsuitable . . .

You should be ashamed at your lack of swimming skills.

Don't swallow so much of that.

Swimming has nothing to do with mercury's presence in the water. If you can not take this threat seriously, take your fingers off your keyboard and leave.

Really? Yet you said because of mercury contamination you couldn't (or shouldn't) go swimming.

Please clarify.

The FDA has warned women of child-bearing age and children to avoid certain types of fish and limit their consumption of some seafood - for example, no more than 6 oz. of albacore tuna a week. In recent years, the amount of mercury in seafood has risen to dangerously high levels. Children exposed to toxic doses of mercury in the womb or through the food they eat can have problems with attention span, language, visual-spatial skills, memory and coordination.

What does that have to do with swimming?

I've swam in a lot of rivers, lakes, and streams. Never ever once did I see any tuna.

Do you know how to prepare salmon/swordfish/tuna to eliminate most of the contaminants? Or do you prefer tofuna?

The controls of monomethylmercury ADsorption in water is a function of PH. methylmercury adsorbs optimally at a pH of 5.5 to 6.5. At higher or lower pHs methmerc desorbs and is taken up by small critters

and bacteria. The sea is more basic(ph>7.5) thats why the repository of methylmercury in ocean water (dissolved) is higher than in lakes and streams (unless youre in an acid mine drainage area, but then aluminum is more of a toxic problem and there probably wont be many fish there )

I insist that your numbers for fresh water is way too exaggerated. I dont deny a methylmerc problem and bioaccumulation in seafood but I think youre just trying to change the subject away from your threads title. Much of the dissolved methylmercury in seawater is actually from natural subsea vents that spew all sorts of heavy metals. Most of this is taken up by bottom sediment but some is dissolved and that gets bioaccumulated

cj-how do you prepare a tuna steak to keep from getting mercury in your system? I know that you can take some chelating agent and then youll just piss it away.

I always remove the darker portions and fat, where toxins tend to accumulate. That's it.

I also take fish oil daily. It dropped my cholesterol quite a bit. Lots cheaper than buying, an especially catching, high quality fish.

I knew the "dark stuff" was a repository for organics like PCB's (They used to have a pcb/dioxin warning for people who lived on fish from the Hudson)

I did not know that the methylmercury was also deposited in thedark flesh. Thank you. We catch a couple tuna each year and we never eat the fatty parts anyway, (its pretty gross).

Feel free to prove me wrong. I don't want to eat Hg either.

But swimming? Comon pom....

I have always said that the most contaminated waters are in swimming pools. The chloramines in the ater are a known carcinogen. ALL OF OUR COMMUNITY SWIMMING POOLS ARE UNHEALTHY AND CONTAMINATED.

My eyes agree with you.

farmerman -- I'm not trying to change my subject but expand it as I wrote above.

Thought some of you would find this interesting . . . or annoying!

The Organic Consumers Candidate Survey will tell us who supports the following New Directions:

Adequate funds for American farmers to make the transition to organic
Universal health care with a focus on prevention, complementary medicine, and good nutrition
80% greenhouse gas reductions
Increased access for low-income communities to organic information and food
Internet freedom
Publicly funded elections, and a guaranteed paper trail for electronic voting
A thorough re-localization and greening of the economy, transferring funds from the current annual $500 billion military budget

The EPA already gutted our manufacturing capabilities. We buy all our heavy armour plate from offshore.

Some eutopia you eco-freaks will have when you're governed by Al-Queda. Hope you like gardening in a burqa.

now youve gone over the line. I happen to endorse much of the above stuff that POM listed, (the only thing Im againsts is "green fuels" that involve ethanol, thats a joke of a concept.

So you lie in .05% of the population who even knows what POM is talking about.

Nothing against that, but to say that I've crossed the line by pointing out what has happened to our country's infrastructure since the creation of the EPA (by a R no less), is pretty far out there in its own right.

you want to live in an industrial garbage pit that was this country's environment in the early 20th century?

Sorry, you can heap all kinds of bumper stickers on us, but the fact remains, we no longer have streams that occasionally "catch fire". We even have salmon back in the St Croix River and shad have returned to the Susquehanna.

What is it that you want made that needs labor costs of 25 bucks an hour that we cannot buy cheaper from some other country and let themn phuck up their environments like good little Republicans wish.

Quite an enigma, all the countries who phuck up their environments like the GOP likes, are all those whose govts the GOP doesnt like.

I'd much rather have the heavy industry on our shores, on our side.

We were "sold down the river" in that respect. It's kinda personal.

Ok Ill back off and get in my cage.

This would be hysterical if it weren't so pathetic. This man has real emotional problems and is probably a bully in real life.