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Whole Foods Pressed To Add Mercury Warnings

October 20, 2005
Some environmental groups are pressing the Whole Foods grocery chain to begin posting warnings in their stores about the level of mercury found in some tuna and swordfish. They say they don’t know why Whole Foods hasn’t followed the lead of Safeway, Albertsons and Wild Oats Natural Foods stores in posting the warnings.

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"When you link on to Whole Foods Market website, they provide information about mercury in fish, the FDA advisory, and the list of fish that pregnant women should limit consumption of or not eat at all," said Michael Bender, Director of the Mercury Policy Project.

"So why aren't they willing to inform customers directly at their stores?"

Last month, a coalition of environmental groups led by the Mercury Policy Project released the results of a major, 22-state mercury testing project, showing that store-bought swordfish and tuna contain levels of mercury that the federal government has determined may be hazardous to human health, particularly children.

Bender says mercury concentrations in fish tested from Whole Foods Market were among the highest. Swordfish tested from a Whole Foods stores in Providence, Rhode Island came in at 2.143 parts per million mercury-twice the FDA's action level of 1 ppm. Similarly, he says, a swordfish sample from a St. Paul, Minnesota Whole Foods had a mercury concentration of 1.633 ppm.

Samples of tuna from Whole Foods Markets also tested among the highest for mercury. The MPP says a Washington, D.C. Whole Foods store sample of tuna came in at 0.603 ppm mercury, whereas an Anne Arundel County, MD tuna sample from the Whole Foods store in that location had a mercury concentration of 0.591 ppm.

"Pregnant women and parents of young children need point-of- sale warnings to make informed choices about the fish they purchase," said Bender.

"Based on our test results, a 44-pound child eating six ounces of tuna weekly from the Washington, DC Whole Foods Market would be four times over the EPA's reference dose, and a 120-pound woman eating just six ounces of tuna weekly from the Anne Arundel County, Maryland Whole Foods store would be eating one and one-half times EPA's reference dose."

The EPA reference dose is an estimation of the amount of methylmercury that, if consumed, would not be expected to cause an appreciable risk of adverse health effects over a lifetime.

The results released in “Fair Warning: Why Grocery Stores Should Tell Parents About Mercury in Fish” were more comprehensive than any recently released by the FDA and included samples purchased at popular supermarket chains such as Safeway, Shaw's, Albertsons and Whole Foods. Swordfish and tuna samples bought in grocery stores in 22 states were tested at the University of North Carolina's Environmental Quality Institute between July 7 and August 11.

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