Ooooh, groovy. We don't eat much tuna anymore, but we've eaten at several of these restaurants, some quite recently.
Study: Toxic tuna found in area restaurants
Some of the tuna served in Chicago's top sushi restaurants contains so much mercury that it shouldn't be eaten by anyone man, woman or child according to a study released today by the group Environment Illinois.
“Mercury contamination is a toxic threat to food safety in Illinois,” said Max Muller, an advocate for the nonpartisan environmental advocacy group, in a news release announcing the study, called Toxic Tuna.The organization teamed up with GotMercury.Org, a Web site that offers an online mercury calculator, to test 20 samples of tuna sushi from 10 restaurants selected from the Zagat Survey dining guide.
They found the samples contained an average mercury concentration of 0.446 parts per million — about 15 percent higher than the mercury content of fresh and frozen tuna reported by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, according to the release.
In addition, they found that more than 10 percent of the tuna samples contained mercury levels above 1.0 ppm, which is the legal limit set by the FDA for fish sold in the United States.
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In this study, the groups also found that 14 of the 20 tuna samples tested, or 70 percent, contained mercury levels that could be harmful to women and children if eaten more than once a month, according to the release.
Full report available here (PDF).
Strange, the Chicago Alderman were worried about banning Trans fats, and foie gras, but mercury drenched tuna rolls at Japonais, Mirai, Benihana, Heat, Matsuya, Ra Sush, or Sushi Wabi was never mentioned.
Also, thanks, all who voted for George Bush, and his end-of-times Republican Pollution party - because allowing industry carte blanche to pollute without burden of oversight or regulation leads directly to poisoning of food, water, air and so on. So, thanks a lot.
