The Rochester Review, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA Brain food, they used to call it. Down enough codfish, or salmon, or some other fortifying denizen of the deep, and maybe someday, like Camus or Curie, you, too, will get the summons to Stockholm. In recent years, though, what with the exhalations of newly active volcanoes like Mounts St. Helens and Pinatubo, augmented by the ceaseless puffings of utility plants, incinerators, and even human cigarette smokers, a disturbing question has arisen.
Fish are the primary source of mercury exposure around the world.
Mercury vapor in the atmosphere comes from both natural and synthetic sources and falls in rainwater to the Earth, where microbes in the oceans and other bodies of water transform it into a substance known as methyl mercury. This substance moves up the food chain and accumulates in virtually all fish around the globe, no matter how far their waters may lie from utility plants, incinerators, volcanoes, and other such sources of this airborne pollutant. If your concern is mercury poisoning, their advice is not to worry. Eat up, they say, and enjoy the benefits from the commercial fish that's sold in supermarkets, fish shops, and restaurants. Take, for instance, the hat makers of yesteryear.