Coalition Splits Over Fish Guideline for Pregnant Women

By Elizabeth Weise

A controversial recommendation by a child-health coalition that pregnant women eat lots of fish and not worry about mercury contamination was not endorsed by many of the group’s members, who are now distancing themselves from that position.

The recommendations, announced last week by the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, are that pregnant, breast-feeding and postpartum women should eat at least 12 ounces of seafood a week, if not more, for the nutritional benefits. The coalition is an Alexandria, Va.-based non-profit group with nearly 150 member organizations.

The controversy surrounds the coalition’s silence about the four high-mercury fish the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency say women and young children should avoid: swordfish, shark, king mackerel and tilefish.

Those fish all can develop high levels of mercury because they are long-lived, top-of-the-food-chain predators. Mercury, which occurs in the environment and is released by industrial pollution, accumulates in streams and oceans and is absorbed by fish. As predators gobble up smaller fish, their mercury levels build up.

Mercury exposure in developing fetuses and children has been shown to harm the nervous system.

The dietary recommendations were put together by the Coalition’s Maternal Nutrition Group. The group’s work was paid for in part by a $60,000 grant from the National Fisheries Institute, a fishing industry trade association.

Ashley Roman, an assistant professor of obstetrics at New York University’s School of Medicine who helped draft the recommendations, called mercury concerns “overblown.”

That sentiment is not shared by many of the coalition’s member groups. On Tuesday, the March of Dimes issued a statement saying, “We continue to recommend that pregnant and nursing women eat no more than a maximum each week of 12 ounces of fish that are low in mercury.”

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Health Resources and Services Administration issued a statement that they did not help craft the recommendation and learned about it only after it was announced.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, one of the coalition’s founding members, also said it supports the FDA’s guidelines.

The National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition has posted a note on its website saying that the recommendation supported by its board “in no way implies that it has been endorsed by our member organizations.”

“Clearly, when these studies come out that are funded by industry that completely dismiss the potentially harmful effects of mercury on mothers and fetus, one certainly has to question the validity of their findings,” says Urvashi Rangan, a scientist at the Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports.

The overall message everyone agrees with is that fish is good for you. It’s high in protein, low in fat and contains omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential to human health and play a crucial role in brain function, growth and development as well as protecting against heart disease.

Helping consumers understand that eating fish is good for them but that avoiding the few fish that are risky is a “win-win situation,” says David Bellinger, an expert on fetal mercury exposure at Harvard University.

“I don’t think the answer is to tell (consumers) to go ahead and eat any fish they want, just as it doesn’t make sense to tell them not to eat any fish at all.” (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.